An 80-year-old Tony Award-winning actor took to Reuters’ Culture Current to reflect on joining Cats: The Jellicle Ball, a production that lifts ballroom culture while stripping it of its radical roots. The actor’s emphasis on the “power of ballroom culture” rings hollow when delivered through the sterile lens of a Broadway stage, where rebellion is sanitized into spectacle and the people who built ballroom are pushed to the margins. The interview, framed as a celebration, is really a reminder of how the culture industry devours marginalized traditions, repackages them as entertainment, and spits out a palatable version for mass consumption. The actor’s six-decade career in theater is held up as a triumph, but what does it matter when the institutions that reward such longevity are the same ones that erase the communities that made the art possible? **Who Gets the Spotlight?** The actor’s reflection on Cats: The Jellicle Ball is not a celebration of ballroom culture—it’s a testament to how the theater elite co-opt and commodify it. Ballroom, born from Black and Latino queer communities as a space of resistance and self-determination, is now reduced to a backdrop for a Broadway production. The actor’s emphasis on the “power of ballroom culture” is a hollow gesture when delivered through the lens of an institution that has spent decades erasing the very people who created it. The interview, framed as a tribute, is really a reminder of how the culture industry turns rebellion into product and sells it back to the people who fought for it. **The Theater as a Tool of the Apparatus** The actor’s six-decade career is held up as a triumph, but what does it matter when the institutions that reward such longevity are the same ones that erase the communities that made the art possible? The theater, like all cultural institutions, is not a neutral space—it’s a tool of the apparatus, a place where hierarchy is reinforced and rebellion is sanitized. The actor’s reflection on Cats: The Jellicle Ball is not a celebration of ballroom culture—it’s a reminder of how the culture industry devours marginalized traditions and spits out a palatable version for mass consumption. The theater elite, from actors to producers, are not the keepers of culture—they’re its gatekeepers, ensuring that only the versions of art that serve the system are allowed to thrive. **What’s Erased** The interview does not mention the queer and trans Black and Latino communities who built ballroom culture, nor does it acknowledge the ways the theater industry has historically excluded them. The actor’s reflection is not a celebration—it’s a reminder of how the culture industry turns resistance into spectacle and sells it back to the people who fought for it. The theater, like all cultural institutions, is not a neutral space—it’s a tool of the apparatus, a place where hierarchy is reinforced and rebellion is sanitized.
