Big cats are familiar territory for The Fox Theatre, where glowing eyes and roars greet visitors at the bottom of the grand staircase and Simba and Nala and a whole cast of Jellicles have made several stops on the stage. But this week a new feline has taken up residence at the Grand Center theater.
His name is Richard Parker, and he’s the intricate, life-size tiger puppet that makes up one half of the central duo at the heart of Life of Pi, on stage at The Fox through October 19. The Tony Award-winning production uses Bunraku-inspired puppetry and stunning stage design to set the audience adrift with main character Pi on a life-affirming journey based on Yann Martel’s novel of the same name.
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Life of Pi sees a young man forced into a lifeboat with several animals from his family’s zoo when his ship goes down on the way from Pondicherry to Toronto in the summer of 1977. Taha Mandviwala takes on the role of Pi while a team of puppeteers working in tandem bring to life Richard Parker and a slew of other animal companions.
“It’s more than just a play, it’s very much a theatrical experience,” says John Hoche, U.S. associate puppetry and movement director and resident director for the tour. “Much like the novel and the movie really spoke to everybody, I think that we have found a different way to speak to people. We do that through incredible puppetry, and not just that, but also award-winning, state-of-the-art stagecraft, sound, and animation.”
Masterful puppetry sits at the heart of this production and requires what the Life of Pi team refers to as “fourth puppeteers” to constantly go along on the journey with them. While it takes a rotating team of eight individuals—three of which guide the head, heart, and hind of the puppet each night—to bring Richard Parker to life, he can’t become a real tiger without Mandviwala interacting with him in a realistic way and the audience’s agreement to suspend belief and believe in his fierce wildness.
“Puppetry in and of itself requires a level of faith and trust because, as audience members we have to go along with this idea that we’re buying into the imaginary world,” says Betsy Rosen, the production’s assistant puppetry and movement director, puppet captain, and one of the performers who brings Richard Parker and other animals to life. “This inanimate object is a tiger. This foam makes an orangutan. We have to meet the puppeteers and the performers in that with our imagination in order to really fill out the story.”
And that story is a rich one. Pi’s story is one of faith, survival, and a person on the cusp of adulthood coming into his own. He is shaped by both the people and the wild creatures—among them orangutans, a hyena, and a zebra—around him as he navigates a harrowing circumstance. We won’t spoil the ending for those who have yet to read or watch Pi’s life unfold, but his is a story that sticks with you long after it comes to an end.
That’s certainly been true for Mandviwala, who finds himself struck by Pi’s resilience and love for life, even after more than 200 nights spent in a boat opposite a snarling tiger.
“Pi has a quote from this show—he says, ‘Choosing doubt as a philosophy of life is like choosing immobility as a mode of transport.’ I think about that a lot,” Mandviwala says. “This is a time of strife and challenge and hopelessness. And I think when you do a story like this time and time again, where you have to kind of put yourself in those positions of hopelessness and yet still find a way to find beauty to overcome or reimbue yourself with the strength that you need to survive—and not just survive, but find something at the end of it, to renew that sense of belief in your own life, in your own story—it’s a very powerful thing.”
Life of Pi runs through October 19 at The Fox Theatre, 527 N. Grand. For tickets and more information, visit fabulousfox.com.
