As “Life of Pi” wraps the current leg of its North American tour, the theatrical sensation celebrates a very successful implementation of the zactrack SMART system to track and highlight complex visuals of Pi, his family and the puppet characters throughout the show. ACT Entertainment is the exclusive distributor of zactrack in North America.

“Life of Pi” began its national tour in December 2024 in Baltimore and is set to close this current run on October 26 in Fort Lauderdale.  Based on the international best-seller by Yann Martel, "Life of Pi" follows a 16 year-old boy named Pi stranded on a lifeboat in the middle of the Pacific Ocean with a Royal Bengal tiger as his unlikely companion.  The Tony Award-winning epic story of perseverance and hope has been hailed for its stunning visuals, world-class puppetry and exquisite stagecraft.

The world’s first plug-and-play automated follow system for stage lighting, zactrack SMART has been part of “Life of Pi” since the show debuted in the US at the American Repertory Theatre (ART) in Cambridge, Massachusetts prior to moving to Broadway after a triumphant run in London’s West End.  Lighting Designer Tim Lutkin had used zactrack systems on “Back to the Future” in London and shows at Disneyland Paris and was familiar with and confident in zactrack’s capabilities.

“Tim did not use zactrack on ‘Life of Pi’ in the West End because the theater had follow spot positions that worked for the production,” explains Paul Toben, Associate Lighting Designer and Programmer who has been with the show since its ART debut.  “But when it came to the US, we studied where the follow spots would go for Broadway, and none of the positions proved suitable in terms of letting us balance where the light would be and staying off the video surfaces, whose remarkable immersive imagery is so important to the show.

“So Tim decided to add zactrack for ART, lighting the show in a totally different way than he had when he used follow spots and conventional, non-tracking lighting in London.”

Using an active zactrack SMART and a backup unit, supplied by Christie Lites, Lutkin redesigned the lighting for ART and Broadway, in the process netting the 2023 Tony Award for Lighting Design.  Up to ten active Trackers at any one time can be linked to multiple lighting fixtures or objects using zactrack SMART, and “Life of Pi” at ART and on Broadway utilized 30 Trackers in total. Three were on Pi and the others resided in different character costumes: two on the tiger and one each on the other puppets, activated as needed via data embedded in the lighting cues.

When the show closed on Broadway, Toben says the UK production team took the zactrack showfile to adapt for the “Life of Pi” UK tour.  Toben consulted on this first tour implementation, which proved very successful.  “When we started to look at doing a US tour, we knew what would work and what would be a challenge in the touring environment so we could tackle these issues ahead of time,” notes Toben, who had also picked up more “tricks and tips” from having used zactrack on the Broadway runs of “Back to the Future” and the “Cabaret” reboot.

However, the tech team at US tour producer NETworks was skeptical about the challenges of much shorter load-in times in the US compared to the UK.  “Load ins in the UK are typically two days, while in the US we frequently load in in the morning and do the show that same night,” Toben says.  “There’s no dedicated lighting time.  The lighting reset for every venue has to happen on top of work happening with other departments – would there be time to recalibrate and test zactrack for each venue?”

Toben and Co-Associate Lighting Designer Tim Reed were determined to find a way “to make zactrack an asset and not a hindrance” for the tour and were “really confident we could save, not cost production time with the system.”

First, Toben and Reed designed a custom tripod that raises the zactrack calibration pucks to a level above a performer’s height so people on stage doing other work would not interfere with the calibration process.  “This is a complicated show to load in, so the more we stay out of each other’s way the better,” says Toben.

Secondly, they figured out how to leverage zactrack to auto-focus the entire show.  “Using zactrack as our one true source of position data for almost all of the moving light focuses in the show – both static focuses and also tracking the actors – has been a game changer,” Toben reports.  “The system is set up to do this, but the extent to which we use it is unique.  The same feature that allows us to design a light to be at a certain position then crossfade to track a person also enables us to use it for every focus, every time a moving light is used.  The crew doesn’t have to manually update these positions.  So what once took three to five hours of work, we’ve been able to get down to about 30 minutes of calibration time.”

These innovations have “been a great benefit to everyone,” says Toben.  “Feedback from the crew has been really positive.  And our electrician has confirmed that there have been no hiccups with the  process.  Now, we’re thinking about how to push zactrack further, even on shows that don’t need to track people but still want ways to save time.”

ACT Entertainment’s Dustin Barnes “did the original crew training on zactrack, which was great,” says Toben.  “Since I’ve used zactrack so much now, I call ACT for support less and less, but they are always there for me.”

He notes that zactrack came to ART for the initial US setup for “Life of Pi” and has stayed in touch across various productions.  “They were with us for ‘Cabaret’ on Broadway, and we spoke about our intention to use zactrack on the ‘Life of Pi’ tour,” recalls Toben.  “They seemed excited about our usage of the system, and I feel they’re constantly finding new and exciting ways for users to implement zactrack.”

For the national tour of “Life of Pi,” Tim Deiling is the Co-Lighting Designer with Tim Lutkin.  Eric Norris is the Production Electrician and Lars Stolpe the Touring Head Electrician. The lighting system and Zactrack equipment is supplied by Christie Lites.