Saskatoon — With a play based on Life of Pi opening to strong reviews in London's prestigious West End, author Yann Martel describes the continued interest in his novel as "endlessly surprising."
The play's success comes 20 years after the debut of Martel's novel about a boy and a tiger stuck in a boat.
The book went on to win the Man Booker Prize the following year and was later adapted into an Oscar-winning film.
"This story keeps on finding new ways of expressing itself," Martel said in an interview with CTV News.
"It was a book obviously first and a movie and now play in West End … (it's) incredibly exciting," Martel said.
The play leans on elaborately crafted puppets to help bring the story to the stage.
"If you didn't have amazing puppets, you couldn't tell Life of Pi on the stage," Martel said.
"And they really add a degree of magic because the tiger, for example, is operated by three puppeteers: one on the outside doing the head, one inside doing the body and one at the back doing the tail and the legs," he said.
"You see them and yet they move with such naturalness that you sort of you buy into it and you see the movement as the movements of the tiger."
Martel said he appreciates artistic risks and the play's producer, Simon Friend, made a simple pitch that won him over.
"Listen, we would really like to do this. This is what I've done. This is England, we do theatre well," Martel said.
"What I love about theatre, is that ... it's mostly made by people pretending to do things I mean, it's completely fake. but it asks you to suspend your disbelief," Martel said.
"Whereas a movie will flatten you with special effects generated by computers and we tend to be a bit more cynical of those."
The author said he expects the show will eventually make its way to Toronto and could see a Broadway run or even a touring production.
As for what could be next for Life of Pi, Martel said one day he'd perhaps like to see an opera.
"A boy in a lifeboat, a singing Tiger, the boy singing, nature singing it would lend itself also to opera. But that's a whole another proposition. We'll see many years down the road," Martel said.
"And you know it could just be a book."
