'Life of Pi' stage tiger roars at Fabulous Fox Theatre

ST. LOUIS – “Life of Pi” has begun its run of shows at the Fabulous Fox Theatre through Oct. 19. FOX 2 News got an inside look at the team who brings a tiger to life on stage and in person.

The tiger, named Richard Parker, is one of the main characters in the play. Three puppeteers have the arduous task of breathing life into the creature.

“Life of Pi” tells the story of Pi Patel, a boy stranded at sea aboard a lifeboat, with only an orangutan and a Bengal tiger as companions.

“To put ourselves in other people’s shoes,” Taha Mandviwala, who plays Pi, says of the show. “To build empathy and have understanding. It’s such a powerful vehicle in our life we sometimes take for granted. And this story of ‘Life of Pi’ kind of brings that to the forefront like, what is the power of story.”

“We use breath and cues through [Richard Parker],” Shiloh Goodin, puppeteer, said. “Sometimes it feels like [the puppet] is a character alongside us and we’re just walking with him.”

Fellow puppeteer Aaron Haskell weighed in: “We use a lot of that breath for the tempo of what we’re about to do and how that progresses or digresses.”

“I find that I look at animals more at how they move and what they do than before I did the show,” puppeteer Anna Leigh Gortall said.