Behind the scenes of Walking with Dinosaurs
The terrible lizards invade the UK
Ever tickled the chin of a baby tyrannosaurus-rex? An unforgettable experience. As I pat the youngster’s grey-green neck, I spy its 30-foot-tall mother not too far away; the same mother that recently scared off a truck-sized ankylosaurus. Just as well that she is, like her offspring, not a living specimen.
This life-sized replica, alongside 14 other dinosaurs backstage, is part of the latest blockbuster show, Walking with Dinosaurs, which sees them roam, roar and chase one another over one and half hours. After touring the US for two years (raking in over $100m so far), the show opens in Glasgow on 1 July, visiting seven other British cities before culminating at London’s Wembley Arena.
Your guide is the enthusiastic palaeontologist ‘Huxley’, who tells the epic tale of how the dinosaurs ruled the earth for 200 million years, through their three main periods: Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous.
The saga opens with the cracking of an egg. Out pops a baby plateosaurus, but in a prehistoric world where it’s a case of ‘dino-eat-dino’, it’s not long before an eight-foot-tall liliensternus darts on stage, mercilessly gobbling up one of the hatchlings. There are gasps of horror from the young children who are perched on their parents’ knees in the row in front of me; but whoops of excitement soon follow when the 30-foot-long mother plateosaurus marches on stage to frighten this murderous stranger away.
Sure, the drama of dinosaur face-offs like this is pitched primarily at children; but not exclusively, as you can tell from looking at the expressions of the parents when two snarling, bull-like torosauruses resolve a territory dispute by using their mighty horns.
To a stirring soundtrack, the action hots up when two whopping great brachiosaruses meet on stage, their crane-like necks brushing each other in a moment of dinosaur affection. In the climactic set piece, a 40-foot-long tyrannosaurus rex – the show’s star – frightens away the ankylosaurus, a kind of cartoonishly inflated armadillo, to be reunited with its dangerously inquisitive child.
After the show, I’m given a rare behind-the-scenes chance to meet the team who operate these resuscitated monsters. Most of the 15 dinosaurs in this show fall into two categories: the smaller ones, like liliensternuses or utahraptors, are achieved through elaborate costumes that are worn by performers who dart about stage in convincingly reptilian fashion. The bigger dinos, which supply the real wow factor, like the fancifully armoured stegosaurus or gargantuan brachiosaurus, are operated by a driver and two puppeteers.
Christine Pirot, one of the drivers who joined the show last December, describes the 35-foot-long stegosaurus she steers: “It’s kind of like a go-cart… I sit in a cockpit with a throttle that goes front and back and pedals that control left and right movement.” She’s always been involved in live entertainment but this is totally different: “I’d definitely not driven a dinosaur before!”
Driving her ‘steg’ is hard work, even though she’s in constant radio communication with a team of puppeteers, who control tail, head and all facial movements. “We can’t see behind us, so we often rely on the puppeteers to tell us where to go.”
Gavin Sainsbury is one of those puppeteers. An Australian who fell in love with puppets as a boy and who has previously worked for the Jim Henson company, he controls the movements of three separate dinosaurs in a system known as ‘voodoo’. “We stand in a gallery, moving scaled-down versions of the creatures’ spines,” he explains. “Every moving axis on the miniature spine relates to the moving piece on the real dinosaur. There are around 36 axes in total.”
I sit in the gallery, watching him and his team operating these skeleton-like voodoo dolls during the performance. Using a device no larger than a hockey stick, no wonder Gavin says it’s “pretty cool to have control over such a large animal.”
Chad Colton, a muscular young man who is tasked with leaping around 13 times a week, wearing the costume of a creature that perished 65 million years ago, admits that his job is a unique one. “I wrote to my alumni association at college and said that I made my living as a dinosaur now,” he says. “They wrote back and said, ‘That wasn’t very funny.’”
Of course, he’s been the butt of a fair few ‘Dino’ gags (Fred Flintstone’s pet dinosaur in the prehistoric cartoon) over the last two years, but anyone who sees up close the bulky, 50kg costume he has to wear, as I did, will appreciate his skill. A classically trained ballet dancer, Chad is faced with the challenge of not just moving nimbly around stage but also operating its neck and all facial movements. “You have to be able to move in a stylised way, and have the artistic sense to make it a living thing, not just a puppet,” he says, likening the movement of a small dinosaur to that of an ostrich, or even a chicken. (“Not that the utahraptors would appreciate the comparison!”)
Driver Christine, puppeteer Gavin and dancer Chad all hail from different entertainment backgrounds, but for them Walking with Dinosaurs is part theatre, part circus, part animated museum. For me, watching the show among a sea of children (from age three upwards), the loudest compliments came from the accompanying adults. As Chad says: “This is a show for children of all ages – from five to 85.” 
Book online at www.dinosaurlive.com or +44 (0)844 875 9000
Dino Dates
Make sure to catch Walking with Dinosaurs as it comes to a bmi destination near you
[ 1-5 July ]
Glasgow SECC
Take a 15-minute drive from Glasgow International to the city centre
[ 15-19 July]
Nottingham Trent FM Arena
There’s a bus from East Midlands Airport or it’s a 45-minute drive
[ 29 July – 2 August]
Manchester MEN Arena
Trains go to the city centre from Manchester Airport, or it’s a 25-minute drive, via M56 and A56
[ 5-9 August ]
London O2 Arena
Take the Jubilee line to North Greenwich
[ 12-16 August ]
Birmingham NIA
Next to Birmingham International. Regular trains to the city centre
[ 26-31 August ]
London Wembley Arena
Take the Jubilee line to Wembley Park
