What happens when a hyena, a zebra, an orangutan, a tiger and a boy walk on to a lifeboat? You get the story of Yann Martel’s Booker Prize-winning novel Life of Pi, about a zoo manager’s son, Piscine Molitor ‘Pi’ Patel, who gets stranded on a lifeboat with the animals when the ship his family is sailing on sinks. The book blends fantasy and reality beautifully, until you can no longer tell where one ends and the other begins. Much of Life of Pi defies belief, but then is not life, too, like that? As Martel says in the book, “If you stumble about believability, what are you living for? Love is hard to believe, ask any lover. Life is hard to believe, ask any scientist. God is hard to believe, ask any believer.”
And now, the Olivier award-winning stage adaptation of Life of Pi, directed by Max Webster and produced by Simon Friend, is being staged at the NMACC in Mumbai on December 5. Lolita Chakrabarti, the Indo-British playwright who brings Pi’s story to life, talks to THE WEEK about the challenges of adapting a philosophical book for the stage and recreating the sense of wonder that has become endangered in today’s fast-paced world. She describes the play as a “theatrical feast that even brings alive the Pacific Ocean onstage”.
Excerpts from the interview:
Q\ What were the challenges of adapting a novel like Life of Pi for the stage?
A\ I absolutely loved the book when I read it in 2002. I could not work out why, because it is one of those books that poses a lot of questions and has a conundrum at its heart. It never really answers it, but I loved how it stayed with me. So when I was asked to adapt it in 2016, I had no idea how I was going to do it. I am an actor as well as a writer, so I respond to the material as an actor. And if I can feel it, then I know how to get there. So I got the book and highlighted all the bits that I liked—the dramatic bits, the dialogues, the philosophical moments, the things that amused me, the religion.... Then I cut and pasted it on to a document under different headings like family, zoo, faith, struggle, animals and philosophy.
Q\ What did it take to recreate the magic and sense of wonder which is at the heart of the story?
A\ If I just transcribed Pi of the novel to the play, he would come across as stereotypical and he is not that at all. If I just put him onstage as he was, he becomes a sort of guru-like character, but that’s not true at all of a 16-year-old boy who could be full of curiosity and excitement and questions. He would not become the guru-like character until he had suffered. We all have to learn through experience, and the hardest experiences teach us the best lessons, even though they are painful. So, it is taking the bones of who Pi is going to become at the end of the play—a man of many faiths and great enlightenment—but not viewing the child as that. The child is someone who has to suffer in order to get there. There are so many wondrous things in the play. It is a theatrical feast that is beautiful and imaginative, with an ensemble cast who worked their socks off to make it look effortless, which it was not. We create a life onstage that is magical. But at its centre, it is the story of a boy who is looking for the truth.
Q\ How did you bring alive the animals in a way that is interactive and lively?
A\ The puppets were designed by Finn Caldwell and Nick Barnes. They are absolutely gorgeous, and very different from anything you would have seen. But at the bottom of it all is the storytelling. The puppets would be beautiful, but meaningless if they hadn’t been filled with puppeteers who are unbelievably experienced and nuanced in their performance. And they work together in a way I have never seen to bring alive the animals. Also, Martel said that the animals have to be dangerous. They could never be cuddly. And then, of course, they don’t speak normally. So I have to work out how to have a conversation between the human characters and the animals. And that was done through research, through working with Finn and the puppeteers, and by going through videos. I went to the London Zoo, observed the animals there, and talked to the zookeeper about their personalities and how they operate.
Q\ How do you think Pi’s struggles act as a metaphor for each of our struggles today?
A\ I think it is relevant as it reflects life in its ups and downs. I also noticed a marked change. We opened in Sheffield in 2019. And then during Covid-19, once the theatres reopened, people were masked. And there was a profound change in how it was being received afterwards. It was a big success in Sheffield, because it is a universal tale. But after we had spent our lives locked inside, unable to leave the house, scared about the pandemic, with fears of whether our loved ones who were far away would survive, there was an understanding of isolation, struggle, grief, loss and survival that was communal. So here onstage, we have a boy who has lost his entire family and has a choice. Do I live or do I give in? And I think that is the big life question. All of us are being tested all the time. Pi is a beautiful feast of a life-and-death story. But he does it with humour, with wonder, with curiosity, and he unrecognisably changes. His life at the end is so different from his life at the beginning, as he emerges stronger with every challenge. And I think there is a message for each one of us: that no matter how many times you fall, you have to get up.