The Life of Pi is positively magical storytelling that uses the human form, puppetry, lighting and design to weave a breathtaking tapestry. Currently running on Broadway, it tells the story of 16-year-old Pi and his impossible journey through shipwreck, survival at sea and sharing his lifeboat with a tiger. It is a play about trauma, loss and the stories we tell. The book on which the show is based was originally written by author Yann Martell and was published in 2001. It has been thoughtfully adapted by playwright and actor, Lolita Chakrabarti who, like all creators, brings her lived experience and perspective to her writing. We talked about the importance of narratives, the importance of audiences having access to diverse voices and the relative meaning of “truth”.
Can you share your thoughts about the importance of storytelling in modern society?
In a time where we don’t really sit and listen in community, storytelling can be diminished. We use this word “entertainment” that covers a vast array of theater, film books, reality tv, etc. But the more I look at life, all of it is a story. It’s just from whose perspective? Not all stories are told, some of us are just living the story. I think perspective is really, really important in storytelling.
Which is why everybody’s storytelling is valuable, because your perspective and my perspective on the same incident in life would be completely different or they might be very similar but have very subtle but important shifts in it. Which always makes me think, “Well, what is the truth?” Does anybody know what the truth is when you’re telling a story of life?
“Entertainment”, I think, diminishes what storytelling is because it’s crucial in society for us to, yes, be entertained and have a good time and have a laugh and do a communal activity but also to process our own experiences and experiences of other people. It’s very important to hear it through stories. People telling you a story at 105 years old is the same as being told a story when you’re 2.
Can you talk about what’s important in stories: Is it the truth or is it the meaning?
I think all the really good stories, whether it is a fairytale, documentary film or book, it has an element of truth running through it. So if you’re battling aliens on the moon, it makes you feel like you’re battling in your own life anyway.
My parents are Hindu and I went to Catholic school because that school would take me at the time. There were people at my school who were very Catholic and I didn’t really understand. But which version is right? I don’t know.
Religion is itself storytelling.
Right! In Hinduism, there are thousands of gods and they’re all very different looking. There are gods with ten arms, gods with an elephant head and all sorts of weird and wonderful things. When I was young, I asked an uncle, “How can there be so many gods and why are they all so different?” And he just said, “This is a way to tell the story.”
In psychotherapy, when somebody has Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, the last step of that treatment is meaning-making. It seems like Pi is working through meaning-making, as well. Is that an aspect of what you were thinking about in translating this story for the stage, about processing trauma?
Absolutely. I don’t remember feeling the trauma that he would have felt through the story of the book. It wasn’t implicit because Yann Martell was looking at other elements of that survival and wreckage and loss and at other philosophical things. But for the stage, I had to think, in reality what would have happened if a young man had lost his family entirely, stayed at sea for 227 days and managed to survive and then lived to tell the tale? What story would he tell? Somebody going through all of that would have some severe issues to deal with.
I think that crisis can either push you over the edge or it can really make you grow. I think that Pi is somebody who is, for want of a better word, enlightened through his suffering. He’s more advanced than the rest of us. That’s then the question that comes of which story do you tell: How do you process this terrible happening into something that you can manage so that you can live with it?
What impact does representation within the creative team have on the storytelling?
It would be a different story in different hands. When I knew I was going to do it, it was a no-brainer to me that for the Japanese shipping officials one of them had to be somebody else. So I made her a woman, named Lulu Chen, and I made her an East Asian Canadian diplomat in Mexico. She is like me, a second, third, or fourth generation immigrant. Pi is Indian and he is now going to be an immigrant into Canada. Mr. Okamoto [the other shipping official] is Japanese and lives there and was born there. I love that kind of understory that is not relevant to the story but gives color and diversity of ideas, thought, character and experience.
The family in the book, I’ve changed the gender of the brother to a sister, the teacher to an aunty and the scientist into a science teacher. I put more women in the story. Jann wrote this book in a different world, from a certain perspective. We are so used to a lot of stories told from a male perspective where the women aren’t really included. And yet, how essential we are. The story would be so much wider and so much more interesting if we’re there.
I think perspective on what you choose and why only comes from personal experience, which is why diversity of voices is so important or you just get the same story told in a different sort of way.
We assume that the white, cis men who tell their stories are the default as opposed to that they are bringing their perspective, too.
Completely. Any story being left out means all of us are poorer. It limits us. It limits everybody. What is amazing now, with the different voices starting to emerge and being encouraged to come out and tell stories is that it blasts storytelling out of the water.
The Life of Pi is currently running on Broadway at the Schoenfeld Theatre. You can purchase tickets and learn more at The Life of Pi Broadway website.