Jellicles Can And Jellicles Do: Meet Grizabella

Turn your face to the moonlight…let your memory lead you…in a fitting finale for our feline features with the Tidewater Players’ cast of Cats, we finally get to feel the mind of the glamour cat. Meow.

Ariel Chaillou preparing for tech week of Cats.

Thank you for giving us a moment of your time! Please tell us who you are and who you play!

Ariel Chaillou: I am Ariel Chaillou and I play Grizabella.

Tell me about Grizabella!

Ariel: I love Grizabella. She was a glamour cat in the past and then she got caught up with the wrong crowd, probably hanging out with Macavity. And then everyone started rejecting her because her life went downhill. So now she’s trying to come back and reinvent herself and be accepted again. She has a deeper story.

Do you find it easy to relate to Grizabella? Do you share similarities with her?

Ariel: It’s interesting. I do feel like I relate to her. Not in the sense of getting mixed up with the wrong crowd, but because— I mean, I don’t know how old everybody else is here, but I am older, and I as get older, there may not be a lot of opportunities for me. And I am always reinventing myself. So that’s where I am at in this stage of my life. I’m living for experiences and I want my children to see that. I have two boys!

How do they feel about mom being a cat in Cats?

Ariel: Oh my goodness. I’m always rehearsing at home and they always hear me rehearsing. And they know when that music changes from happy to somber, they know, especially my four-year-old, he goes, “It’s Grizabella! That’s you, mom!” And I say, “Yeah, that’s me!”

Why did you want to be a part of Cats?

Ariel: I fell in love with Cats when I was 12 years old. I saw it on Broadway at the Winter Garden Theatre. And Laurie Beechman was the Grizabella at that time and what happens is when you fall in love with something and you stay in love with it, it becomes a part of you. And let me tell you, I have dreamed of doing this role since then and I never ever, ever thought that I would actually do it. For me to be a part of it, and to be this part of it is a hugely significant thing for me. Plus I love Bambi, I was in one of her shows before. I was in The Little Mermaid back in 2016. Being in Cats literally means everything to me and it means even more because this will be the first time that my children get to see me perform and it will be in my dream role. How cool is that?

Do you have cats or just children?

Ariel: I have children. And I have a dog. If I didn’t have a family I would be a cat lady. I absolutely adore cats. I love cats to death. But I do have the dog. She’s a cockapoo. She’s very sweet. Jinzo. My husband named her. She is a very sweet dog, she loves people, and she probably loves cats too.

We learn that all cats have three names. Grizabella is your cat’s ‘more dignified name’ and while we can never know the ‘secret name’ that she calls herself, what do you think her ‘family daily use’ name is? What are the humans calling her every day?

Ariel: That’s a great question. Maybe Smoky? Without the ‘e’ because there was this little stray cat that my parents used to feed that kind of reminds me of her and they called that cat Smoky. But I don’t know. I mean, I resonate with Grizabella so well that I think her human name would probably be mine. Ariel. It would be Ariel.

What does it mean to you to be a Jellicle Cat?

Ariel: Gosh you’ve got all the good questions. To be a Jellicle Cat is to be expressive, right? If people were to describe me they would say “I’m very extra.” So I feel like I fit in very well being a Jellicle Cat, because whether it’s Grizabella or any of the other Jellicles, they’re all expressive in their own way.

What has been your big personal takeaway from being a part Cats?

Ariel: Anything is possible. Anything. Is. Possible. My audition was very last minute. I wasn’t going to do it. I had literally counted myself out before I even tried. At the last minute I was encouraged by my friend to send a video because I wasn’t going to make the physical audition. I hadn’t done a show since The Little Mermaid. It’s been six years, I’ve got kids now…but then I decided, I had nothing to lose. So I sent the video and the next thing I know I was cast. So the biggest takeaway is ‘never give up, always keep pushing forward.’ Because you never really know what life is going to throw at you.

If you had to sum up the total Cats experience in just one word, what is the word that you use?

Ariel: Fun.

Cats plays September 16^th 2022 through September 25^th 2022 with Tidewater Players, in residence at the Cultural Center at The Havre de Grace Opera House— 121 N. Union Street in historic downtown Havre de Grace, MD. For tickets call the box office at 667-225-8433 or purchase them online.

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