all words: Libby Ellsworth
all photos: Liz Shen

If I were crude I would say that seeing Dinosaurs live for me would be like going to a live sex show.

But I am not crude, I am a debutante. So let me proceed in a more delicate manner:

What you see:

What Libby sees:

When I walk down the aisle that one fateful day, the beginning of the rest of my life will be set the theme to Jurassic Park (tip of the hat to John Williams).  So the fact that I feel this way about the Walking With Dinosaurs tour (which opens in DC at Verizon center on September 16th-ed) makes a lot of sense, right?

Let me tell you about the show: it's a 65-man operation with 26 trailer trucks under the iron rule of an ex-Stones tour manager. There are 15 Dinosaurs and 2 babe paleontologists.

As luck would have it, I got the opportunity to hit on interview one of the press agents AND the kid that plays the baby T-Rex.

Spoiler Alert: The dinosaurs cast members are all hooking up.

PART ONE (PR guy or whatever)

BYT: So tell me about your involvement with walking with dinosaurs.
Well I'm the tour's spokesperson and we travel all over the country in advance of the tour and do all these promotional events to promote Walking with Dinosaurs.

And how violent are the dinosaurs?
Well, I mean, they roar and they snarl and they fight in the show but they also protect their young, and you know, you're time warped back like sixty-five to a hundred million years. Our show's paleontologist takes you on an incredible journey through the three periods when the dinosaurs were roaming the earth.

What's your favorite dinosaur in the show? Or, well, what kind of dinosaurs are there in the show? There are fifteen, right? That's a lot.
Oh my god, there's seventeen life-sized dinosaurs, ten different species represented. We have a flying dinosaur,the Ornithosaurus, we have a Stegosaurus and we have a Tyrannosaurus Rex, and the Allosaurus and Taurosaurus, and of course like today we have the baby T-Rex as well.

Do you guys give them nicknames? Do they have names?
No, you know, we call them by the names that they're called.

And where do the dinosaurs come from?
Where do they come from?

Yeah.
Well, these were created in Australia and we brought them over here in July of 2007.

Like "Jurassic Park" created? With like dino DNA? Did you rip off John Hammond?
(Laughs) Umm...not quite. I mean...it's based on the BBC television series and these guys, our producers, took it and have turned it into this huge live theatrical production. And our goal, as was the goal for the TV series is to make you believe that these dinosaurs are real, that what you're looking at are actually real dinosaurs. You know, and that took six years and $20 million to achieve that, and they have definitely achieved it.

Where did most of the funding come from?
Well, between the BBC and the producers, you know, that's how they...

Oh right, because that's like a normal thing.
Right.
So if that's a baby T-Rex, how big is the mother T-Rex?
Yeah, the momma T-Rex is probably about seven to eight times that size. She's eighteen feet from shoulder to shoulder.

Wow!
So our largest dinosaur is the momma Brachiosaurus; she's thirty-six feet tall and fifty-six feet nose to tail. And you know, that's like the height of a three story building.

Right. How many people does it take to control that one?
The big ones...all the big ones it takes three people to operate them. There's two people who operate the head and tail and the roar and the blink of the dinosaur, and then there's a driver underneath that actually drives the dinosaur out onto the arena floor. We take up the entire floor in the arena. I mean, the show is huge. It's massive.

So I would probably cry every time I saw the show, like about everything, because that's just how I am with dinosaurs. But what's the most tender moment of the show? You said something about protecting?
Yeah, the momma Brachiosaurus and the baby Brachiosaurus. There's a very, you know, tender moment between the two of them, and it's quite moving.

It's scary?
Scary? No, it's like a roller coaster ride. It's more of a thrill ride, you know? Especially with momma T-Rex. You know, the kids aren't necessarily scared, they're just reeling back maybe, but they're, you know, smiling and just loving every minute of it.

So our readers are like 25 to 40 years old, young professionals, people who like to go out and have a good time. Why is this better than going to see a concert?
Oh, because, you know, you've seen...first of all, we are much larger than a concert, any concert you've ever seen. Most rock and roll shows are ten to fifteen trucks. This is twenty-five trucks to move the production. I mean, you've got a huge lighting grid, you've got special effects, and we've seen rock and roll shows before, but you've never seen life-size dinosaurs before. You know? You've been in a museum where you've seen the skeletons and things like that, but you've never seen them move and roar and fight right in front of your very eyes. I mean, you really do believe that they're real.

So have there been any mishaps with the dinosaurs?
Oh, as with any production it's all very high-tech, so you've occasionally got your "gremlins" as we call them...

THERE ARE gremlins in the show?
No...

I was just kidding...
You know, technical gremlins. Yeah, no. No real gremlins.

Too bad.
They weren't around back then.

Well, Dinosaurs II, then.
Yeah. Dinosaurs and gremlins.

Yeah. It'd be a major blockbuster.

PART 11 (w/ baby T Rex aka STEVEN HERSHEY)

So how long have you been a baby T-Rex?
Umm...since January of this year. I auditioned for the Walking with Dinosaurs tour back in July of 2008, and then they waited about six months before giving me a call to see if I would pick up all my bags and move out with them on the tour and I of course said yes, it's a great opportunity.

How hard do the dinosaurs party?
(Laughs) I mean, they partied so hard they theoretically became extinct.

That's why they became extinct? That solves everything! They partied out! And so you picked up with the tour where?
In Tulsa, Oklahoma.

And what are your qualifications for being a dinosaur?
Well it was pretty much across the board like, I mean I was an actor in New York for a while and the audition that they had, the initial audition, was really like a physical fitness test. They just wanted to see how much you could take in terms of the endurance and the intensity of the work. It was crazy, you know, we did like, shuttle runs, one-legged squats, stuff like that.

Yikes.
I was one of the last men standing, so I got to move on to the second round which was playing with the puppet, playing with the actual dinosaur. And that's...I was just crossing my fingers the whole time thinking please just let me play with this big dinosaur suit. Because when do you get an opportunity like this?

So was it hard to finesse? Like, you seem very agile with it.
Yeah I mean, it becomes second nature after a while I guess. I mean, it took like, about a month of really hard training to get to that state. But when you first get in the suit, all your worried about is like, standing up. If they ask you to turn your head it's like, what? I can't turn my head, I have to run here! You know? So once all the little things come together you can worry about the fluidity.

Are there any openings? Cast openings?
(Laughs) Are you interested in becoming a dinosaur?

Who isn't?
(Laughs again...why isn't he taking this seriously? It's a serious question...)

So have there been any religious or creationist people protesting the show?
Umm not that I've heard of. I mean, you're always going to get that in some places, but for the most part I think people recognize that this is just an imagination extravaganza.

That teaches evolution.
Well, they don't go out and say those types of things. Like I guess you're right, but it's very tactful in the way that it suggests that information. But also it's just so amazing seeing these creatures on stage that people forget about theories and religions and all that stuff and they just enjoy that these old monsters are coming to life in front of them.

So is it really hard being on tour? Like grueling just like any other sort of tour?
(Laughs) It can be, yeah, because it's of course very intense physically. Sometimes when you're on the tour you do about two to three plots with these suits, like the smaller suits like the raptors and the baby T-Rex, which is what suit performers are specifically hired for. This can be two to three times a day, and you're out there for five minutes and you feel, you know, already you're sweating. It's like you've run a marathon.

So how big is the cast?
Well in terms of the suit performers, there are about five or six. There are five different dinosaur characters that go out per show, but as I'm sure Matthew mentioned, the bigger dinosaurs carry one person who's the driver and two people who are puppeteers, like radio puppeteers, so they sit and sort of lounge and manipulate the spine and the head and everything.

How old is the cast? Is it a younger cast or an older cast?
It all varies.

Do dinosaurs date each other? Like are Brontosaurus people dating T-Rex people?
(Laughs) Well...

Are the dinosaurs hooking up? You know, it gets lonely out there in the Jurassic era...
YES!

What dinosaurs are hooking up? You can just tell me the dinosaurs.
Well, you know, it's a little risky, but the Taurosaurus started sniffing out the Raptors.

That's awesome!
It's actually really dirty because the Taurosaurus is just like, a really big dinosaur, and the Raptors are, you know, well, I don't know how it's going to work.

What are you going to do after you're done being a dinosaur? What's left?
Well, you know I might move on to the Ice Age, become like, a Wooly Mammoth and just sort of move up the evolution scale.

Previously in Misc/Awesome:

• 4/19: HAPPY National High Five Day!
• 4/17: Hangin' Tough with The D.C. Rollergirls
• 2/24: BYT Archives: Geek It Out
• 12/28: Terrible Boyfriend/ Girlfriend Generator.
• 12/1: The John Waters Advent Calendar-it starts today
• 11/28: It Chooses You: All I Want for Christmas is Everything from Miranda July's Pop-Up Shop
• 11/3: Things I'd Move to Minnesota For
• 9/6: PHOTOS: Maloof $$ Money Cup
• 9/2: PHOTOS: Chantilly Model Train Show
• 9/1: Libby's List: 5 Things I Want Right Now...