This Olivier Award-winning play is coming to Broadway! Lolita Chakrabarti’s dazzling stage adaptation of Yann Martel’s best-selling novel Life of Pi will premiere at Broadway’s Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre beginning performances Thursday, March 9, 2023.
“It has been such a privilege to adapt Yann Martel’s modern classic Life of Pi for the stage. It was daunting, creatively, exciting, and always collaborative. To be able to tell this story the way I imagined it, to create the world using my references and viewpoint has been an extraordinary gift. And to see it resonate with young and old audience members alike has been humbling,” said playwright Lolita Chakrabarti, “It is a beautiful, visceral, magical show, a story of survival which all of us can fundamentally relate to after the effects of the pandemic. I am beyond thrilled that we will bring this play to Broadway.”
Produced by Simon Friend, Daryl Roth, Hal Luftig, Mark Gordon, and Playing Field, the five-time Olivier Award-Winning new play will officially open on Thursday, March 30, 2023. Tickets will go on sale to the general public on Thursday, November 3, 2022.
“Having started work seven years ago to bring Yann Martel’s much-loved story to the stage, for it to live on Broadway is enormously gratifying,” said Simon Friend, producer of the Olivier Award-winning Best Play, “Life of Pi has been so joyously received by audiences young and old in the UK, which is testament to the skill of the large team of artists delivering a show which entertains, and makes you think and feel in equal measure. We can’t wait to welcome audiences on Broadway.”
Prior to the Broadway engagement, Life of Pi will make its North American Premiere at the American Repertory Theater at Harvard University, co-led by Terrie and Bradley Bloom Artistic Director Diane Paulus and Executive Director Kelvin Dinkins, Jr., playing at the Loeb Drama Center December 4, 2022, through January 29, 2023.
Life of Pi is directed by Max Webster, with Set and Costume design by Olivier Award winner Tim Hatley, Puppet and Movement Direction by Finn Caldwell, Puppet Design by Olivier Award winners Nick Barnes and Finn Caldwell, Video Design by Olivier Award winner Andrzej Goulding, Lighting Design by Olivier Award winner Tim Lutkin, Sound Design by Carolyn Downing, Original Music by Andrew T Mackay, and Dramaturgy by Jack Bradley. Broadway casting for Life of Pi will be announced shortly.
The play is currently playing at Wyndham’s Theatre in London’s West End where it won five Olivier Awards including Best New Play, Best Scenic Design, and Best Lighting Design. In a historic first for the Olivier Awards, the seven performers who play Royal Bengal tiger ‘Richard Parker’ were collectively awarded Best Actor in a Supporting Role. The London production with its cutting-edge visual effects has garnered great critical acclaim.
Based on one of the best-loved works of fiction – winner of the Man Booker Prize, selling over fifteen million copies worldwide – Life of Pi is a breath-taking new theatrical adaptation of an epic journey of endurance and hope.
After a cargo ship sinks in the middle of the vast Pacific Ocean, a sixteen-year-old boy named Pi is stranded on a lifeboat with four other survivors – a hyena, a zebra, an orangutan, and a 450-pound Royal Bengal tiger. Time is against them, nature is harsh, who will survive?