'Pose' Star Kya Azeen On Bringing Black Queerness To 'Cats'

The latest reimagining of the classic Broadway musical Cats feels like a bold reclamation rooted in ballroom and queer culture.

For actress Kya Azeen, being part of Cats: The Jellicle Ball is a full-circle moment, and a reflection of how much the culture has had a hand in her success today.

“Ballroom is how I became who I am today,” Azeen told MadameNoire just ahead of one of her showday rehearsals. “It was, in many ways, because I didn’t get to attend college, and when I joined ballroom, I was like 19, so it was kind of like my college years of me finding myself and understanding who I was as a trans woman, and just as a Black queer person.”

She added, “So to be in this space right now, for one, my background within dance and within performing, and to also see it in a space where its theater mixed with ballroom, is really bewildering for me, but also just speaks to the young kid that’s like able to just do everything that I was training for so long and then also to incorporate a culture that influence me so deeply.”

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While it would seem that there would be a lot of pressure that comes with creating a space where some Black queer audiences may see themselves reflected for the first time, Azeen recounts how Cats: The Jellicle Ball takes that energy and grounds it in authenticity.

“It’s so innate in me to be a Black trans woman who’s from ballroom,” said Azeen. “It’s just natural, and what I add to the show is already a culture that I’ve already come from, so it does feel natural, necessarily. I do hope that other queer youth are looking at this and definitely seeing themselves, because I think for a long time, and it’s so wild, because I have a friend who, years ago, I thought I would never dance again, and she always told me, like, ‘Girl, you can do this. You can do this,’ and tried to push me forward. But it was a different time when I was 19, and just looking back, I really hope that these queer individuals are seeing themselves and saying, ‘I can exist as myself and still perform and execute things within theater,’ because I just didn’t see it at the time. I think because I didn’t see it, I didn’t think it was possible.”

As a Pose alum, a move made early in her career, Azeen reflected on not necessarily realizing how much of an impact the show would have on the culture, especially as it pertained to the LGBTQIA-centered series and productions that would follow in its footsteps.

She jokes that her character in Cats: The Jellicle Ball is very adjacent to her role as Blanca in Pose.

“So, the character I play is Etcetera,” Azeen recalled. “I had a lot of help building this character with N’yomi Stewart, who’s also a mother and within ballroom, and our associate director. She had a lot of help with me, just kind of piecing together who Etcetera is, and what she’s doing. She basically was from the house of Macavity, Macavity’s daughter, and then left, with aspirations of joining and creating her own house.”

“Throughout the show, I’m scouting about and having these ideas of like, who can I form for me to have my own statement?  Very Blanca in Pose, honestly,” she chimed. “But it’s been cool. Again, I feel like I know this culture so well. It’s so home for me. So it hasn’t been like a lot of crazy homework to embody Etcetera. The only thing that I would say is a little different is that sometimes, when I show up, I’m like, Kya can be crazy in her head. For the show, I feel like I have to be extremely fearless, which helps, because we have an amazing costume designer, Qween Jean, who has me in this beautiful cheetah leotard and skirt that makes me just step into just leaving Kya beyond and being this ultimate femme, and just fearless  throughout the production.”

Azeen concludes our conversation by explaining why this reimagination of the Broadway sensation Cats is needed now, more than ever.

“It means so much,” she said. “I feel like as people, especially as Black folk, we need community more than ever,” she said. “We always need community, and I think that’s the way that we have to rally through the hard times and the triumphs that we have had to overcome through history. It means a lot to know that I’m in a production where we’re celebrating each other every night. We’re seeing each other, and there are even moments throughout the show where I’m getting emotional thinking about it, like, specifically, when Chasity [Moore] comes out, and she’s singing ‘Memory,’ I think a lot of us are just like, I cannot believe it. For someone specifically from ballroom, a Black trans woman who is being on a spectacle, in highlighting, and within this production, and she’s singing an iconic musical theater song like ‘Memory,’ and eating it up every night, it’s bewildering to see this.”

“It means a lot to see ourselves in all our glory and in our light and just shining,” Azeen concluded. “I think with all that’s going on in the world, like to silence it, that this production is needed more than ever, not only for the people that come to see us, but for ourselves.”

Click here for upcoming showtimes for Cats: The Jellicle Ball now on Broadway.

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