>> BOWEN: I'm Jared Bowen.

Coming up on Open Studio: we go behind the scenes for a slice of the Life of Pi, the new Broadway-bound play.

>> If the tiger is angry, I want the tiger to be experiencing the anger but the puppeteer to experience that anger as well.

They're not experiencing the anger for the puppet but they are experiencing what is happening in the puppet.

>> BOWEN: Then, Neil Diamond gets the Broadway treatment in the musical A Beautiful Noise.

>> ♪ Sweet Caroline ♪ ♪ Sweet Caroline.

♪ >> BOWEN: Plus, textile artist Anita Maharjan literally weaves her cultural heritage into her work.

All that, plus our round-up of what to see in Arts This week, it's all now on Open Studio.

♪ ♪ First up, it's tricky enough to adapt a novel to the stage, but what if that also means bringing a menagerie of zoo animals to life and telling a story about storytelling along the way?

All of this comes together in the theatrical adaptation of the award-winning book Life of Pi, now onstage at the American Repertory Theater before it goes to Broadway.

Ahead of its North American premiere, we dropped in on rehearsals to talk to the creative team behind this production.

Life of Pi, the new Broadway-bound play at the American Repertory Theater, is a tale rippling with tests-- of survival, will, and belief.

For the audience too-- because we are pressed to believe we're watching Pi, a 17-year-old boy, adrift in the ocean with a Bengal tiger.

The play is an adaptation of Canadian author Yann Martel's Booker Prize-winning novel, which also became the inspiration for the 2012 Ang Lee film.

>> Without Richard Parker, I would have died by now.

My fear of him keeps me alert.

Tending to his needs gives my life purpose.

>> BOWEN: It centers on Pi, who, along with an orangutan, hyena, zebra, and tiger, is cast into the sea after a ship carrying his family and their menagerie of zoo animals sinks.

It's Pi telling his story.

>> I'm going to die first unless I can get on that boat.

>> BOWEN: Or rather stories.

That he either survived with the animals in tow or the animals were merely metaphorical stand-ins for his family and shipmates.

>> We are going to be fine!

>> I asked Yann Martel, the first thing I asked him when I met him was you need to tell me what really happened, because I need to know the truth.

>> BOWEN: But when playwright Lolita Chakrabarti met with the author as she launched into the project, his only advice-- don't lose the animals.

>> So he left me with that dilemma because it made me fulfill what he set up in the book, which is the ambiguity.

So it is the animals who are on the boat.

And yet there's an alternate story and he sets up that we follow what we know.

So we like to rely on what we know and what we can prove.

So it's up to you when you come and watch the play which one you believe.

>> BOWEN: Chakrabarti says she believes that ambiguity also goes to the heart of who Pi is-- that his storytelling can be construed as a mechanism for exceptional resilience.

>> I think maybe we never know who we are until we're tested.

And out of great suffering can come wonder.

And I think Pi, in the extraordinary difficulty that he engages through the story, I could only explain it as enlightenment.

>> God help us, please!

>> In some ways it's space to grieve, but also a really optimistic space to reflect on what we can bring forwards.

Well, actually, post-pandemic, I feel that the story has become even more relevant.

>> BOWEN: Max Webster directed Life of Pi to a slew of awards, including Best New Play in London's West End.

>> Should we gather around and be a bunch of mates... >> BOWEN: We met as he rehearsed a new ensemble for the production's U.S. debut.

Much of Webster's cast are puppeteers animating the animals alongside Pi.

It's a concept that plays directly into the work's themes of imagination.

>> We really know that the pieces of wood over there are not a zebra, but it's kind of like a game you invite the audience up to play with you, just as a child plays in a way.

>> BOWEN: Here, though, it's a much darker play.

>> It's not a sort of fantasy story in which the animals are cute.

So these are... this is nature red in tooth and claw rather than a sort of anthropomorphized animal, sort of animals in which you kind of want a hug from.

>> BOWEN: The team, led by puppetry and movement director Finn Caldwell, has spent considerable time studying animal anatomy, mannerisms, and behavior to make the puppets as real and as brutal as possible.

Like in this scene where the wounded zebra is attacked by a hyena.

>> We strip it right back to the beginnings and say, okay, this is what we think a zebra would do if it's very distressed.

This is what we think a zebra would do if its leg was broken and it's trying to stand up.

Bit by bit build the detail up, so that in the end, we have a convincing picture.

>> BOWEN: A former actor and one of the puppetry minds behind the Tony-winning play War Horse, Caldwell says the magic comes in the symbiosis between performer and puppet.

>> If the tiger is angry, I want the tiger to be experiencing the anger.

But the puppeteer to experience the anger as well.

They're not experiencing the anger for the puppet, but they are experiencing what they... what is happening in the puppet.

The tiger roars and I roar as well.

>> BOWEN: And it must all happen together.

Many of the animals are portrayed by multiple puppeteers.

And in London, England's theater awards-- The Oliviers-- cited all seven performers playing the Tiger with the Best Supporting Actor Award, an historic first.

The connective tissue among puppeteers, says Caldwell, is breath.

>> We start with breath to give you emotion so I can be... (breathing heavily) visibly upset just from the way that I'm breathing.

And so, again, we use that breath to let the audience understand the emotional state.

The great thing about breath is that also it allows the puppeteers to communicate with each other without having to talk.

So if something over is very frightening, and we're connected together operating a puppet, by the way we breathe in response to that, we can tell what we might be doing next.

(gasps) (breathing heavily) And so I've taken on as a journey of being surprised to being calm without having planned it.

>> BOWEN: It's the breath of Life of Pi, that in this story of struggle and perseverance, frequently leaves the audience struggling to catch its own.

♪ ♪ Neil Diamond's trajectory of chart-topping music-- from "Sweet Caroline" to "Song Sung Blue"-- is charted itself in the new musical A Beautiful Noise.

Now that it's on Broadway, we revisit the conversation we had with the creative team when the show launched right here at the Emerson Colonial Theatre.

("Sweet Caroline" playing) For the team distilling Neil Diamond's life on stage, the playlist is personal.

>> My gateway drugs for Neil Diamond really were theatrical in a way, because it was seeing the movie The Jazz Singer.

>> ♪ I couldn't sleep at all tonight ♪ >> "America" and "Brooklyn Roads" and "Shilo," I think they speak to his heritage and to his childhood.

>> ♪ On the boats and on the planes ♪ ♪ They're coming to America ♪ >> So we understand what it is to be the son of immigrants fleeing terror in Europe and coming to America, and seizing that opportunity, and then finding yourself in Brooklyn, and lonely, and creating an imaginary friend named Shilo, who is your constant companion.

>> ♪ Young child with dreams ♪ ♪ Dream every dream on your own ♪ >> BOWEN: And for actor Will Swenson, who is playing the superstar singer-songwriter, his Diamond pick... >> ♪ "I am," I said ♪ ♪ To no one there ♪ >> It seems like maybe he learned early that, like, that honesty is the currency that people respond to.

He was never afraid to put himself out there personally.

>> BOWEN: After years in development, the musical A Beautiful Noise, opened days ago at the Emerson Colonial Theatre.

We spoke with the team as the show was deep into rehearsals.

>> It's kind of the story of a man coming to grips with, with who he is today, and the challenges that he has today, and, and... and grappling with the decisions that he made in the past and wishing he could change them.

>> BOWEN: The 81-year-old Diamond retired from performing in 2018 after a diagnosis of Parkinson's disease.

It was only when he stepped off the stage, says director Michael Mayer, when Diamond, who has been part of the process every step of the way, was ready to tell his life story.

>> He is probably truer to the human he was before he became a star.

We reveal in the show the showman of Neil, the Jewish Elvis, if you will-- that is a character that he put on.

It was a way for him to take someone who is innately shy, and quiet, and kind of a loner, that's how he could stand on a stadium stage and sing to 80,000 people.

>> BOWEN: Mayer, the Tony-winning director of shows like Spring Awakening, the Green Day musical American Idiot, and Hedwig and the Angry Inch, has shaped the show as a memory play, not simply a night of Diamond's greatest hits.

>> We're not doing the, "And then I wrote, and then I wrote, and then I wrote."

It's a much more emotional and abstract exploration.

>> BOWEN: Teased out by way of a therapist, played by Linda Powell, helping an older Neil Diamond reflect on his younger days.

Now decades into her own acting career, it's a concept with which she deeply identifies.

>> It starts from an older person looking back at their life, and looking back at the experiences they went through and trying to figure out, "How did that make me who I am?

"Why did I do that that way?

"And if I'm not that person anymore, who am I?"

>> I relate to it endlessly.

>> BOWEN: Will Swenson plays the younger Neil Diamond, who began writing songs at 16, whose hits date back to the 1960s, and who's ultimately sold more than a hundred million records.

>> He was just being played on a loop in our house growing up.

One of my earliest memories is of the "Hot August Night" eight-track tape in my dad's van in, like, 1976, I think.

>> BOWEN: So with Diamond virtually in his DNA, Swenson says he had an out-of-body experience the first time, during rehearsals, he had to perform Diamond in front of Diamond.

>> I just was strumming my guitar, thinking, "Keep it together, keep it together."

And I went about five feet too far downstage.

And one of the ensemble members bashed into me, and I was, like... (groans): "Terrible way to start."

Um, so yeah, I don't remember a lot of it, just 'cause... As a positive of that, I don't think I'll ever be more nervous in my life, ever.

>> BOWEN: Clearly, he's become more comfortable, joining Diamond recently as he made a rare appearance singing "Sweet Caroline" at a Red Sox game.

>> ♪ Touching hands ♪ ♪ Reaching out ♪ >> BOWEN: Swenson says Parkinson's disease may have curtailed Diamond's career, but his spirit rages on.

>> He reminds me of my dad a ton.

They're the same age, roughly.

And he's great, sharp as a tack, and, and still so invested in the music and the sound.

And he's been singing along with us and we feel privileged to get to be in the room while he's singing "Sweet Caroline" with us, it's amazing.

>> ♪ Sweet Caroline.

♪ ♪ ♪ >> BOWEN: Next, textile artist Anita Maharjan was born in Nepal, where weaving is a way of life.

Today, though, she lives in the United States and her work reflects both her cultural heritage and the consumerism that she sees as an American way of life.

♪ ♪ >> I was still painting during my undergrad, and at the time, one of my professors challenged me like what can you bring something new in the art world?

I was taking fiber art as an elective and doing one of the projects, I used recycled grocery bags from my kitchen pantry, and I started weaving like how it is done in my culture in Nepal.

Weaving really took me back home to my people, my community.

So in that sense, taking something familiar, historically rich technique from my culture, and blending it with the material I find every day became a way for me to, to explore my art.

♪ ♪ Recently my work highlights the consumerism-based society in western culture and its ecological impact.

I grew up in an agricultural society.

Collecting garbage is not a thing in our culture.

Or we produce very few nondegradable waste.

Straw that is an agricultural waste after harvesting the rice, we use that to make mats.

This kind of weaving, it is very specific to my ethnic background, which is Nawari.

♪ ♪ Weaving is done primarily by uneducated home-staying women.

It's very communal activities where they all chitchat, and talk, and then weave all day.

It doesn't require, like, loom or any kind of support.

The human body itself helps support the weaving.

It is passed from generation and generation.

And my mom taught me this.

My mom used to work all day because she's a single mom, and she worked in a brick factory.

And then she would come home and after dinner this was another job that she would do to make extra income.

And, you know, I grew up seeing her weave, and put that intense labor to feed our belly.

And so in that sense, it's very personal to me, and being able to connect that to memory living in... across from where I come from, it's very powerful to me.

♪ ♪ Where I live here in western culture, almost everything come in a plastic package.

The plastic bags in my pantry represent how many trips I've made to the, the stores.

We are very good at processing and generating the waste.

♪ ♪ It begins with the plastic bags, again, and then hotel bed sheets, and I also use the tissue paper that people use for like baby shower and some other stuff, I'm like give me all of that.

I can use them.

And I also have family and friends who donate the bags to me.

So, again, it starts all with collecting the material first.

♪ ♪ The plastic bag, I cut into the strips to make it long, which also it's very intense labor of work.

And then I twist the strips, almost like a big strand, to make like one rope, knot.

As I have the, the quantity and the length I want, I start weaving with the plastic.

I use my legs to, to kind of hold it, and as it grows, I sit on it, and then move from right to left, left to right.

♪ ♪ At first, I was using it as a canvas to paint on it, which progressed slowly to more twisted different forms, and different shapes.

And so it shifted from two-dimensional to more three-dimensional work.

And now my work comes in different shapes and size, and they are more interactive installation pieces.

♪ ♪ And even though bags comes in a different shape, different shape in a sense like it represents different brands, from high end brands to discounted stores.

And, you know, that resembles the informal hierarchy of class and the value we put in objects and ourselves.

♪ ♪ My work represents my multicultural identity as a Nepali, and as an American, how it is shaping me and how I'm shaping it.

I see myself woven together into both culture, and in that sense, my work is an homage to people, especially women from my culture to represent the art, craft, and the labor of those underprivileged women.

♪ ♪ >> BOWEN: It's time for Arts This Week, your download of the latest arts and culture events in Boston and beyond.

♪ ♪ In its concise photography exhibition, Harry Benson: Four Stories, the Addison Gallery of American Art delivers us into four moments of the 1960s that ultimately defined both the decade and American history, all captured by a Scottish-born photojournalist Harry Benson.

They swing from high to low and back again.

Not unlike our present times.

He came to America to capture the Beatles' first American tour.

As he says, he never looked back as he captured them playing and being playful.

Their youthful energy stood in contrast to the conflict he'd captured in tanks rolling down the streets of Berlin during the construction of the wall.

There was more divide, as Benson documented the weeks-long James Meredith march against fear in the South in 1966, a galvanizing effort reaching for civil rights.

He was also on the scene to cover Robert F. Kennedy's presidential run, from campaigning on streets swelled with eager supporters to its sudden and horrific end.

Benson was there for it all and with an intimacy that practically makes you sense the heat of those intense times.

♪ ♪ The Colby College Museum of Art in Waterville, Maine, features an entire wing permanently devoted to the art of Alex Katz.

For the first time ever, it's reinstalled the wing to look at Katz's lifelong affinity for theater and dance.

Katz gravitated to the performing arts in the 1950s, engaging in a 50-plus-year partnership with the Paul Taylor Dance Company, designing sets and costumes.

And yet the depth of this passion has been something of an art world secret.

Throughout his career, Katz, now 95, has painted people, places-- and as we realize now-- performances in vibrant hues.

A painter who emerged in a time of abstract expressionism, but who kept to sharpening his own visual vocabulary, Katz often returned to movement-- the splayed fingers, arched necks, and regally reaching arms that define dance.

Being in the Colby Galleries feels like a performance.

The way these paintings are hung intensely, close together, floating above one another creates an electric energy.

There are embraces, leaps, focus everywhere you look.

The artist himself collaborated on this show, revealing how even he sees dance in social situations.

For anyone who thought they knew Alex Katz, this is a sublime reason to look again.

If it's your first time, this is a lively welcome.

♪ ♪ The Danforth Museum in Framingham, Massachusetts, is taking care with care.

It's currently showing three artists examining issues around caregiving.

Photographer Jane Szabo in an installation titled Family Matters examines the time she spent caring for her parents in the final stages of their lives.

She photographs objects from the family home, but adds a suggestive layer of storytelling.

The ceramic Christmas tree constricted by its cord, the unsettling image of an Easter egg which has seemingly lost its yolk.

A model sailboat either never finished or coming undone.

With their black backgrounds, the photographs are at first stark, but ultimately moving as we understand the great care and considerations Albo has given to each carefully chosen object.

The Danforth presents mixed media and fiber artist Lisa Rosowski under the banner Othering.

Her father lost both parents in the Holocaust and her work is haunted by that void.

This is a massive collage featuring children displaced during the war.

It's juxtaposed with glaringly empty picture frames.

There is juxtaposition too in delightful photographs of Jewish people and their homes, but they're placed over the stomach-churning images of the storerooms Nazis assembled after pillaging the homes of Jewish families.

Rosowski also comments on that hate and trauma here in the U.S. in her ravaged rendition of the American flag.

Stars falling, disturbing scenes like a KKK march surfaced through the fabric.

In her eyes, it's America far from the beautiful.

Here we also find the work of conceptual artist Toni Pepe, considering caregiving, but pointedly in what's expected of a woman at the same time her bodily autonomy is under threat.

In her series Mothercraft, Pepe photographs historic press images of motherhood, along with decades of notes from news outlets about how they were used.

We also find her sculpture, like the bases of well-worn rocking chairs, and her celestial image made starry by breast milk.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ The Boston Athenaeum is a 216-year-old institution with a Harry Potteresque address of 10-and-a-half Beacon Street.

Inside, it also carries a Hogwarts-like enchantment.

Now, even more so.

It recently completed a 16-month renovation and expansion, nearly doubling its size.

It's lighter and roomier, more space in which to enjoy the library's half million books, or its hundreds of thousands rare books, maps, manuscripts and works of art.

There's also been a reconstruction of philosophy that the Athenaeum, once a bastion of Boston Brahmins, today is a place for all.

Art by women and people of color now draw focus, alongside treasures like George Washington's personal library.

And there's a new study room for visiting the special collections, brought directly to you for inspection.

The Boston Athenaeum has also reopened with a must-see exhibition of artists books.

That is to say, books made by artists as works of art.

Triumphs of text, aesthetics, and materials, each book is more than the sum of its parts, the curator told me.

They exist for beauty, for social commentary, and/or to stake a physical claim in a digital world.

♪ ♪ Here's what I'm looking forward to next week.

The Museum of Fine Arts Boston opens a retrospective of the late artist Cy Twombly.

He was considered ultra-contemporary, but his inspiration was always rooted in antiquity.

Check out Making Past Present.

This has been your arts and culture download.

I'll see you back here next week.

And that is all for this edition of Open Studio.

Next week, artist Titus Kaphar brings new meaning to the gilded cage, using gold to shine a light on the men behind bars.

Until then, I'm Jared Bowen.

Thanks for joining us.

As always, you can visit us online at GBH.org/OpenStudio.

And you can see us first on YouTube.com/GBHNews.

And remember to follow us on Instagram and Twitter @OpenStudioGBH.

I'm @TheJaredBowen.

♪ ♪