Q&A with the creator of Dinosaur Zoo, director Scott Wright
This October will see Dinosaur Zoo come to the Rose Theatre Kingston, direct from the West End. Bringing awesome prehistoric creatures to the stage as you’ve never seen them before, kids will love interacting with these extraordinarily life-like puppets, and can even meet the dinosaurs after the show.
Here director Scott Wright tells you why you must not miss this show!
Q. How would you describe Dinosaur Zoo?
A. It could be described as a Live Animal Presentation, much like you might see at a zoo or a wildlife park, except that we have dinosaurs not tigers, ranging from very small babies to some of the largest ever found. We teach the audience aspects of animal care and we invite some members of the audience onto the stage to assist us with feeding and caring for our dinosaurs. This is the show that Steve Irwin would be doing if dinosaurs were alive today!
Q. Who is the show aimed at?
A. Dinosaur Zoo appeals to anybody between the ages of 3 and 300.
The show is naturally geared towards kids. Children worldwide love dinosaurs but one of the surprising things about the show is that adults get a real kick out of it too. The show does have some great educational overtones but at the end of the day it is very funny and has a lovely endearing nature to it.
Q. What is the aim of the show?
A. Dinosaurs are awesome but they can also be big and scary; every kid knows that. We like having fun, but also delivering the facts and being honest . When kids ask if 'it's real', the easiest answer is " yes it's a real puppet ". Thanks to the magic of theatre and people's desire to suspend their disbelief, more often that not just 2 minutes after you announce that all the dinosaurs are puppets, people forget and continue on the journey.
Q. The show is described as ‘interactive’ – how do audience members get involved?
A. Throughout the show we bring people onto the stage; this is actually my favourite part because it is unrehearsed. People's reactions are very real and unpredictable so it makes for some wonderful moments. In the past we used to try and invite all the children in the audience to come onto the stage with us, but as the show has grown in popularity and audience numbers have got much bigger, we now bring some of the dinosaurs out at the end of the show for a meet and greet so that folks have a chance to pat the creatures or take a photo.
Q. How many people are in the cast?
A. For the UK tour, we have an awesome Australian host, Lindsey, and two puppeteers, Hal and Steve. Lindsey has worked with the world’s leading puppeteers including Handspring who created Warhorse. Hal was head of masks and puppets at The Lion King in the West End.
Q. How did you come up with the idea of the show?
A. I’m just a theatre director who knows a lot about dinosaurs … even though a lot of people think I’m a paleontologist!
We had been custom making life-like dinosaur puppets for museums around the world and as a result had developed some pretty cool ways of presenting them within a museum context. We started to realise that we were onto something quite unique, so we started doing small outdoor street shows at festivals around Australia and from there the idea snow-balled into the show that it is today. We like to keep the show fresh by building new dinosaurs all the time so that we keep up to date with recent discoveries.
A. Why do you think Dinosaur Zoo has proved so popular?
A. It's unique, there is nothing like it in the world and because it's Australian it has a fun, edgy charm to it. Most people's experience of dinosaurs is based on inanimate objects in museums or as animated creatures in film or television, so by bringing our dinosaurs onto the stage we come one step closer to realising everybody's dream of having these awesome creatures alive and well in our modern world.
Q. Have you always been interested in dinosaurs?
A. When I was a kid there was a lot less known about dinosaurs. I remember making a paper-mache dinosaur with my dad and grandpa which I dragged around with me from one house to the next (we moved a lot when I was younger) and it slowly fell apart, but not without a tonne of new paint and repairs.
Q. Are you a fan of Steven Spielberg’s movie Jurassic Park?
A. Not really, I do appreciate that Jurrasic Park kick-started a global resurgence of interest in dinosaurs at a time when it was felt that palaeontology was a dying science. But the commercialisation of dinosaurs is perplexing - which I know is ironic coming from a man who has created a show about dinosaurs.
We hope that we provide a fresh way of looking at them by not anthropomorphising them. None of the dinosaurs in our show speak, or teach children to count, nor do they wear clothes, drive trains or live in houses. Of course dinosaurs can be used as a gateway for learning, which is always commendable but sometimes this can be exploited well beyond any real validation. We hope that in our show we at least impart some valued lessons about the true nature of animal behaviour whilst having some fun and a good laugh too.