Here & Now's Robin Young joined director Max Webster and actor Adi Dixit after a recent performance. The show will be in Cambridge through January when it moves to Broadway. The theatrical adaptation of Life of Pi, about the tales of a teenage boy stranded on a lifeboat in the Pacific Ocean with a hyena, a zebra, an orangutan and a Bengal tiger. The animals, including zebras, a hyena, orangutans and of course the tiger, Richard Parker, are depicted using puppets, moving around the stage almost like a ballet, manipulated by a team of puppeteers. (Courtesy of the American Repertory Theater) There, while sipping coffee in a caf in the town of Pondicherry, he met an elderly man named Francis Adirubasamy who offered to tell him a story fantastic enough to give him faith in. LIFE OF PI is an immersion into the world of imagination - one so powerful, so deeply transformational, that it stands as a cinematic monument to the power of storytelling. The novel was adapted into a movie in 2012, and now, it's on stage at the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In an Author’s Note, an anonymous author figure explains that he traveled from his home in Canada to India because he was feeling restless. Part fantasy, part psychological thriller, "Life of Pi" also veers into theology, philosophy and our perceptions of reality. The ship sinks, and Pi alone survives: adrift on a raft, with a very hungry, fully-grown Bengal tiger. Life of Pi is at once a realistic, rousing adventure and a meta-tale of survival that explores the redemptive power of storytelling and the transformative. Born as a novel in 2003, it tells the story of an Indian teen whose family packs up its zoo animals in crates and sails off from Pondicherry, India, for a new life in Canada. (Courtesy of the American Repertory Theater) Some plays offer a slice of life Life of Pi is a wedge of fantasy. The cast runs to 24 actors, many of them also puppeteers, with a small fleet of crew members to make the whole show. "Life of Pi" at the American Repertory Theater. But Life of Pi is a much larger affair than this small-man-big-cat duo.
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