For Your Consideration

When I first read Lolita Chakrabarti’s adaptation of LIFE OF PI, I found it to be a profound and moving story that asked important questions about survival, immigration, faith, our connection to the natural world, and our instincts as human beings. I also thought, ‘how on earth am I going to do this?!’

There is something about being asked to stage impossible things that is really exciting to me. There is opportunity for invention, creativity, playfulness, and making something that is surprising to the audience. Staging something impossible asks us in a deep way to engage our imagination. That, for me, is the core of what happens when we go to the theatre. We sit together in a room and think about how we might imagine something. And that is an act of real humanity.

It is very rare for a puppet designer that a project comes along combining puppets and actors in such a seamless and exciting way as LIFE OF PI.

We wanted to allow and encourage the audience to enjoy treading the fine line between objective verity and theatrical storytelling. Our aim was to make puppets that felt vital, palpable, and able to convey the rigors of life and death and the serious themes of the play, whilst avoiding becoming overly naturalistic.

The emotional engagement is phenomenal in its weight and how well the tale resonates across the ocean and the stage, but none of that would work as well as it does if not for the phenomenal talent of the whole production/design team, namely; the breathtaking scenic and costume design by Tim Hatley (West End/Broadway’s Travesties), the detailed and dynamic puppet designs by Finn Caldwell and Nick Barnes.

Lighting Pi is a complex and intricate endeavor. I harnessed new technologies to create seamless transitioning between the different worlds Pi conjures up in his storytelling.

The challenge is to fully embrace the video world, enhancing it constantly with deep saturated color washes and texture whilst drawing the audience’s eye to the performers and puppets. For this, we pioneered a specific use of a complex lighting track system. With its use, we were able to follow multiple performers and puppets in a full spectrum of colors and angles to make them sing out again the show’s wonderful floor designs and backdrops.

Lutkin’s lighting, which turns a bustling market into a salty cargo ship with the flick of a switch, exemplifies the height of simple, jaw-dropping stagecraft.

Composer Andrew T. Mackay has given the show the full orchestral treatment, while sound designer Carolyn Downing comes up with atmospheric, at times terrifying effects.