Cats at the edges of life

What might it mean to think of Cats as a musical belonging to HIV/AIDS histories? Though the musical’s performance life begins just before widespread attention to HIV/AIDS, the musical ran on Broadway from 1982 to 2000, an eighteen-year stretch that encompasses the early days of HIV/AIDS awareness marked by myriad suffering and loss, US political aversions to addressing the crisis, art propelling activist campaigns and the eventual mitigation of the illness due to novel therapies. Throughout it all, Cats was performed on Broadway. Historicizing Cats through the HIV/AIDS crisis emphasizes how musical theatre can be understood as a genre perennially oriented towards cycles of loss and rebirth.