For my latest exploration into Seattle subcultures, I joined the Woodland Park Players, a community theater group made up mostly of residents from Phinney Ridge, Ballard, Green Lake, and Greenwood, for one of their last rehearsals ahead of opening night of their eighth show: Cats. by Nathalie Graham Photos by Billie Winter In the back of the Crown Hill community center, past the sneaker squeaks from the basketball court and down the hall from the row of plieing ballerinas, a group of software engineers, nurses, teachers, carpenters, and other professionals crawled on the floor, nuzzling each other and meowing. Some wore arm warmers to simulate fur.  The fuzzy piece of fabric tucked into the leggings of the woman in a “Hamilton” shirt swished as she moved. “Just to confirm—the body roll is one very long rotation?” a middle-aged man asked. The choreographer confirmed and then demonstrated for him. Stiffly, he performed a body roll. Good enough! Someone pulled me onto the floor. Soon, I was crawling alongside them. For my latest exploration into Seattle subcultures, I joined the Woodland Park Players, a community theater group made up mostly of residents from Phinney Ridge, Ballard, Green Lake, and Greenwood, for one of their last rehearsals ahead of opening night of their eighth show: Cats. The WPP is a labor of love. All of their sets are handmade by neighbors (the current set director is a local architect who makes his money redesigning kitchens but gets his creativity out designing Dr. Suess-y junkyards for Cats). A volunteer orchestra accompanies the performance. Many of the all-volunteer performers have no stage experience, and those who do haven’t been on stage in decades. It creates a not-totally polished and uniquely charming experience. One that even I, a tone deaf double-left footed idiot, could participate in and feel good about. After nuzzling a software engineer or two myself, and spending three hours preparing for the Jellicle Ball, I left rehearsal with tears in my eyes. And I don’t even like Cats that much. The Invitation to the Jellicle Ball Linda Joss, the producer and founder of WPP, met me outside the community center with sparkly pink cat ears on her head, apologizing for being five minutes late and promising me unnecessarily to buy me a drink at the post-rehearsal watering hole: The Thirsty Fish. She walked fast and talked faster, leading me into the rehearsal space. An unfinished cat puzzle lay on the table. Cat stuffed animals sat on a piano. Joss is the force behind WPP. She founded the theater back in 2016 with parents she befriended from West Woodland Elementary School where her children attended and where Joss organized the talent show for many years. The WPP’s first show was Oklahoma. Since then, they’ve put on Guys and Dolls, Anything Goes, Curtains, Nice Work If You Can Get It, Spamalot, and Disenchanted!     Joss got the idea from her brief time living in Michigan, where she participated in an Ann Arbor group called the Burns Park Players, a community theater made by and for people in the neighborhood. They had a no cut policy and funneled any profits they made back into youth arts organizations. That became the model for WPP. During those first few years, the WPP also operated on a “no cut” basis. “If you're in the neighborhood, you are invited and you're welcome regardless of your experience,” Joss said. Now, they’ve become popular enough—and widened their boundaries to allow for more diversity—so they have to do some cutting. Still, you don’t have to be a great singer or a great dancer to make it into a WPP production.  “We’ve got people who had an interest in theater, but they weren’t going to take a chance at another theater because it felt too big,” Joss said. “But because their neighborhood theater was doing it, and it feels more like a family, they took a chance.” While WPP does give back to the kids (the theater has donated $57,000 to 247 different student arts groups in Seattle in its nine-year existence), the only ironclad rule for who can perform is that WPP is for adults. To join, you have to be at least 18 years old and out of high school. “Adults don't get these opportunities very often,” Joss said. The Naming of Cats On the day I attended rehearsal, the performers were doing their first full run through of the show. The community center room filled with bodies radiating nervous energy. Before the run-through, the cast practiced dance transitions. Then, they rehearsed the fight scene with Macavity, the villain cat. Mike Boyle, 56, is the “software geek” who plays Macavity. He sprinted and spun across the room while the rest of the ensemble chased him. He first got his start in theater in Microsoft’s theater troupe. Their first show was Little Shop of Horrors. This is Boyle’s sixth show with WPP. However, many people in the theater had even less experience than Boyle when they joined up. Among them is Perry Greely, 30, an artist and a nanny who is one of the dancers in the show. She’d always wanted to do musical theater, but never had. When she saw the call for auditions on a WPP poster around her north Seattle neighborhood, Perry, who’s loved Cats since she watched it on her grandma’s VHS as a kid, decided to throw caution to the wind and try out. “It feels kind of like connecting with a part of me that I was too scared to before,” Greely said.  For Ruben Van Kempen, directing WPP’s Cats is a lot like teaching, which is his bread and butter. He’s worked as a director for 40 years, and spent the majority of his career teaching and directing at Roosevelt High School. He even put on Cats with the high schoolers. Many of the costumes and the plethora of pussy cat wigs for the WPP performance are recycled from that RHS performance. “Some people in the show hadn't ever done theater until their early 40s, their mid 30s, and they’re trying for the first time to figure out how to dance, or how to even sing well,” Van Kempen said. “It's giving them personal satisfaction and growth.” Brad Serbus is the 58-year-old carpenter who plays Munkustrap, the narrator character in the show. He’s been participating in WPP for nine years. Before that, he’d never had any musical theater experience. “I always wanted to perform,” Serbus said. Serbus also plays bass in a band. That’s where he usually leans into his love for the stage. But the WPP is a wholly different experience. “Other than the performances, it’s the rehearsals that are really fun,” Serbus said. “There’s a sense of honesty between people and you have to put yourself out there and that’s really liberating.” When some WPP members heard they were doing Cats, a musical with quite a lot more crawling than is typical, they thought they couldn’t do it, according to Van Kempen. “They said, ‘We can't dance. I have hip issues. I have elbow issues, I have knee problems and I said, ‘So what about your cat? If the cat has hip issues, they would still do what they need to do. So use that pain or use the strength that you have,’” Van Kempen said. “If you can't kick high, well, your cat just can't do that. So it's not a judgmental form of performance.” This non-judgmental feeling is different, especially for the people who used to perform in high school or college when things were cutthroat and competitive. Being together and doing something as a collective is what this theater is all about. The Moments of Happiness Grizabella the Glamour Cat is the main character of Cats. She’s an outcast. No one wants to talk to her or touch her. “But she explores this issue of fitting in, being a part of a group, having community,” says Tatiania Summers, the 25-year-old non-profit manager who plays Grizabella. “And we can all relate to that.” Summers spent her youth singing. When her peers talked about being in club soccer games, Summers joked that she was in “club choir.” With WPP, she’s found singing and theater again. And community. Since the majority of the WPP lives in the same general area of Seattle, it adds another layer to community theater. This is how people are getting to know their neighbors—and you get to know your neighbors really well when they’re hoisting you up in the air or you’re pretending to groom them with your tongue. Gabbie Benitez, 32, joined the theater when she saw a poster on Phinney Ridge for WPP’s Disenchanted show in 2023. The call for auditions read “Princesses Wanted.” Benitez was relatively new to Seattle at the time. She worked from home for her new job at Shopify. And, it had been nearly a decade since she’d performed, something Benitez had spent much of her childhood doing. Doing musical theater again made Benitez “pretty much the happiest I've ever been,” she said. Becoming part of the cast meant becoming part of the neighborhood. “These people have become my family,” Benitez said. “I'm having dinner with them. We're doing karaoke nights.” She plays Rumpleteazer in Cats, one of the twin cats. Her opposite, Mungojerrie, is played by a 24-year-old. The rest of the cast’s ages skew older. Dee, who, when I asked her age, said, “Just say old,” is dancing in Cats with WPP for her first production. WPP has had people as old as 65 years old perform with them. “I'm going to dinner with these women who have had full lives and are also mothers and working and doing [WPP] and it kind of gives me a little glimpse into my future,” Benitez said. “If I wanted to be a mother one day I can still have this really fun life outside of these other things.” Cameron Keyes, 58, works for Seattle City Light and has been with WPP from the beginning. He performed a little in college and he plays music, but he only found the stage again decades later when WPP started in his neighborhood. In Cats, he plays Old Deuteronomy, the wise and beloved patriarch of the cats. Recently, performing with this community has taken on a new resonance for Keyes. “I'm mindful of getting older,” Keyes said, “and my dad just passed away, so that's making me even more mindful of getting older and more mindful of the power of community and sort of togetherness.” Memory The full run through, as with any Cats production, starts with the bouncy “Jellicle Songs for Jellicle Cats.” The cast stalked their way into the center of the room. Some voices cracked while soloing. No one cared. Soon, all their voices joined in unison and sounded perfect. The cast tossed their heads back and forth in time with the delightful frenzy of the song. Many grinned—I’m not sure if that was a directorial note, or if they couldn’t fight against the serotonin rush. I found myself beaming, too. This is not surprising because I’m a sucker for musicals. I often think that if I’d been born with completely different abilities, I’d have at least tried out for a school musical or two. From an early age, I learned that I am woefully tone deaf. As my step-dad, Ben, told me, I couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket. That knowledge is one of the reasons I detest karaoke. It’s just not for me. I assumed musical theater was the same—something I could consume, not participate in. Then, during the “Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer” song, someone led me into the mix. Joss gave me her sparkly cat ears to wear. Alongside the ensemble, I pawed at the other background dancers. My skin prickled, my cheeks flushed. I felt exposed, and also alive. When it was over, I wished I could do it again. The WPP made it so. In act two, during “Mr. Mistoffelees,” another dancer coaxed me on stage. Behind the action and the heart-swelling melody, I donned my catsona again, curling my hands into paws and swaying in tune. The chorus brought me back to my childhood kitchen and my step-dad, Ben, singing the refrain “Oh! Well I never was there ever a cat so clever as magical Mister Mistoffelees” over and over. It was the only lyric he remembered. He couldn’t sing well, but he did anyway. While on all fours on that community center floor, I realized that my love of musicals comes from Ben. He took my brother and I to our first musical, The Lion King, while he was wooing our mom. He would watch the movie version of Chicago on repeat and would croon Mister Cellophane for days afterwards. He took us to Wicked. Twice. It’s because of him that I chose to see a touring production of Cats for my twelfth birthday. I hated it back then. As I sang the lyrics of “Mr. Mistoffelees,” I didn’t care about being pitchy. I matched my voice to those around me and it melted into the mix, part of something bigger. I sat back down. Summers, as Grizzabella, inched on stage. She poured her soul and every part of her former life as a choir kid into “Memory.” My heart clenched with each high note she hit. Tears pricked my eyes as she belted. I turned to look at the Stranger photographer I’d brought with me. Tears streamed down her face. When Summers sat back down next to me after her show stopping solo, she pulled out her music book and asked me to sing alongside her for the final song. “I’m so bad,” I said. “You’ll be great,” she said. Her finger traced the lyrics, “A cat's entitled to expect/ these evidences of respect/ So this is this, and that is that: And there's how you address a cat.” Together, we sang. My voice quivered at times, but it didn’t entirely fail me the way I was used to. She smiled at me after, “That was so great.” I knew it wasn’t, but in this theater, I knew they didn’t care. This was the best production of Cats I’d ever witnessed. Cats showed at Shoreline Community College Theater in March. Catch the next WPP production next spring. Or, even better, audition for the next show this October. ...read more read less