Up next in 10
Video: LIFE OF PI Is Getting Ready to Take Center Stage on Broadway
May 17, 2024
Previews are underway for Lolita Chakrabarti's dazzling stage adaptation of Yann Martel's best-selling novel Life of Pi, running at Broadway's Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre. BroadwayWorld caught up with the company before opening night and you can meet the whole gang in this video!
Show More Show Less View Video Transcript
0:00
Hello, I'm Richard Ridge for Broadway World. The five-time Olivier Award-winning
0:04
best play, Life with Pi, is coming to Broadway. It'll open on March 30th here
0:08
at the show in Feld Theatre, where we drop by to meet the company and give you a sneak peek at the dazzling puppetry
0:14
Welcome to Broadway with Life with Pi. How excited are three of you
0:20
So excited. All three of us are making our Broadway debut in this show, which is super cool
0:25
Very exciting. This is all new and kind of nerve-wracking, to be honest, but it's great
0:31
You are about to come to Broadway. You two are returning to Broadway. You're making your Broadway debut. How excited are you
0:36
I'm super excited. It's really, there's a word in Tagalog called gigil, which means nervous excitement
0:42
So it's like, it's like this feeling. Well let's talk about this. You switch out which animals you do each night in which position. Tell me about that
0:52
So there are eight puppeteers, and there are six puppetry tracks in the show
0:57
And so each of us knows two, sometimes three, sometimes more tracks. And so we
1:03
have a team that we're mostly with in the tiger. So when that tiger team is on
1:08
we're in that track. And then in our non-tiger nights, we're in another track
1:12
where we do other puppets. And then occasionally we get a rest night, which is also really great. And that's sort of how we roll through
1:19
You're both Olivier Award winners for your beautiful puppetry work in this show
1:24
I mean, I love that the Oliviers give a puppetry award. Yeah, that was very special for us and all of the community of puppeteers. It
1:33
was, to get that acknowledgement was very, very special. But also coming over here, realizing that it made waves over here as well
1:43
that the awards being given was amazing. You know, it made history
1:49
Yeah, it's stupendous. It's a special show because the story that Jan has written all those years ago
1:56
is incredible. Right now, it speaks about so many things that we all need to
2:04
be aware about, like immigration and love. And a lot of people are battling
2:12
inner demons. And this story is about that, really, you know, how we can
2:18
sort of face them and survive knowing that they're there and not let them
2:24
eat you up. And it also makes you curious about things that you can't
2:34
explain, whether it be God or whatever divine force that's around us
2:42
There's so much to, like, unpack. And that's why I think I love it. And I
2:49
think people, when they come to watch it, it won't be just a play that they
2:53
see. And when they step out of the theater, they forget about it. I think
2:58
it will be something that will sort of, like a spell, create a world of
3:05
questions in them that they go on thinking about. What's made this so special for each of you
3:13
I think it's the collective theater making that is happening on stage. It's a complete ensemble piece. Even though Pi is on stage the whole time
3:20
we are all working together to create theater in a way that I don't think is done on Broadway very often. So it's lovely
3:26
I'd echo the same thing. For me, of course, it's personally meaningful
3:31
as it's my Broadway debut. But it's also, there are 10 South Asian Americans
3:35
in the cast, and all of us, it's our Broadway debut. So for the strong
3:39
South Asian representation, it's very special. Yeah, it's the epic storytelling, the feast of it all, the only way that
3:45
you can really do this play. Talk about how much joy this is bringing to audiences already here in
3:51
New York. We've had the most amazing response. I mean, what, we've done a week of
3:56
previews, maybe less. And every single show, we've had standing ovations and gasps. So that's really thrilling, because then you know the
4:02
storytelling's working. Yeah. One of my favorite things every night, apart from seeing the show, is I
4:08
sit in the stage management office doing notes after the show, which is just above stage door. And as each actor walks out, I hear that amazing
4:15
roar. We've got 17 folk making their Broadway debuts, and each of them
4:19
is experiencing that for the first, that Broadway roar for the first time. And that's really thrilling
4:24
So we took you through today, just one section, very short, one-minute
4:28
section of the show, which we call the swimming tiger or the oar battle
4:33
where the boy and the tiger have both fallen into the sea. And they're
4:37
both vying to see who's going to end up on that lifeboat. And they sort of have, as the name describes, a battle with an oar between them. And
4:44
we took you, in our little demonstration, we took you from what it would be like in the rehearsal process. So when we're working without
4:50
even the puppet. So we had the boy, no weapon, no oar, and the three
4:55
puppeteers operating the tiger. The next level that we showed you, we introduced the puppet, we introduced a weapon for the boy, and we started
5:01
moving our revolve around as well. So you could see the intricacy of the choreography there, but it's still without lights and sound so the
5:08
actors can communicate with each other so they can be safe. But then the final thing we showed you was a little snippet from the show. So we had
5:13
video, light, sound, revolve, puppetry, action, all the rest of it
Events & Listings
Movies
Music & Audio
Performing Arts
Acting & Theater
Musical Films
Vocals & Show Tunes
Broadway & Musical Theater