Here, Kitty Kitty!

Curiosity killed the cat, yet not everything looks as it seems, as cats are notoriously known to hive nine lives. Drawing inspiration from “Cat on a hot tin roof” by Tennessee Williams, this dance theatre performance only utilizes the main plot of the play as a starting point, but aims to further explore the stories, characters and hidden messages that the author only briefly mentions in his dramaturgical oeuvre. Constrained by what was socially acceptable in the 1950s and aware of the censorship he had to abide to in order to maintain his career as a playwright, Williams successfully insinuates several themes as backdrop stories, not only in this, but in many of his plays, thereby alluding to characters and situations that would have been regarded as problematic at the time.

Almost 70 years after the play premiered, many social and cultural constraints have been elevated, and we have seen it all, yet our patriarchal and heteronormative society still dictates the cultural and societal norms around what we consider to be taboo. In Williams’ text, Maggie the Cat, as a protagonist, threatens her husband Brick that she will jump from the roof if he continues to disregard her love for him. In this performance, however, the entire Polit family joins her at the hot tin roof, but are willing to stay and get burned, because if they jump, they will fall amongst the common people that they fear. Instead, they find pleasure in the unbearable discomfort and pain in order to stay at the top. Obsessed with their appearance, status and wealth, they decide to celebrate their seemingly perfect lives by finding comfort in alcohol and drugs that help them survive the ugliness of the world in which they live. As they continuously dance in order to hide their pain, we observe their tangled relationships that haunt them. In Here, Kitty Kitty! our sex-crazed, borderline neurotic and deeply disturbing characters trick the cat so she can come for them to play with her, symbolizing our society’s obsession with momentary satisfaction, constant need for dopamine and false representation. So, meow so you can get noticed and get in, but, as always, be careful of the dogs waiting to ruin the fun for you.

The performance won the prize for best play from the student jury at the Prishtina International Theatre Festival on May 26th 2024.