Paper Wing Theatre founder Koly McBride just returned from the Tony Awards in New York, the highest and most prestigious award event in American live theater, where she had a ball—especially because a production she co-invested in, Cats: The Jellicle Ball, won best costume design.
Cats: The Jellicle Ball is now playing on Broadway at the Broadhurst Theatre. This 2026 Broadway hit is a reimagining of Andrew Lloyd Webber's iconic 1981 musical. Instead of singing cats in an alley, this version transports the beloved music and poetry directly into the vibrant world of New York City’s underground queer ballroom scene.
McBride was one of many co-investors in the show, based on T.S. Eliot's Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, Andrew Lloyd Weber’s music and adapted by Zhailon Levingston and Bill Rauch.
“I do investing,” McBride says, adding that she has a New York life and her home life in Monterey, and they're both equally as important. "On smaller projects, I can actually co-produce, but I haven't done that too much lately.”
McBride finally got to see Cats: The Jellicle Ball at the PAC Center in New York, which is considered off Broadway.
“I really loved it,” she says. “It was completely reimagined. It was a drag ballroom at its finest, and there was an energy and a liveliness to it. And yet here were all of the songs that we've known from the more traditional Cats from years ago. And they just wound it all together perfectly.”
Investing in future awarded theater productions requires a bit of money, so all other hobbies and pleasures are now on hold, McBride shares with the Weekly. And it can always win you tickets to the Tony’s that come with each nomination. Before investing in Cats: The Jellicle Ball, she did the same for the show Operation Mint Meat.
Asked about the Tony’s, McBride says, “Just imagine a room of nothing but theater nerds in all aspects, and all of them getting a chance to get together, do nothing but talk and laugh. It's just a lot of fun. And there's a lot of socializing in parties and things that happen afterward and that's always fun to get included in that.”