by Max Marbut
Staff Writer
The biggest show ever brought to Jacksonville by the FCCJ Artist Series opens next week. It hasn’t played on Broadway, so it can’t surpass the record “Cats” set for number of performances and with fewer than 20 “stars” it isn’t the biggest cast that has ever taken the local stage.
What sets this show apart is the size of the “actors.” Putting all 15 of them on stage at once made it impossible to present the show at the T-U Center, the Artist Series’ usual venue, so “Walking with Dinosaurs The Live Experience” will be presented in the Arena, the only venue that would physically hold the production.
There are 15 dinosaurs in the show and they are all life-size,” said Mundi Ross, associate company manager for the tour. “Five are smaller puppets and 10 are much larger. The largest dinosaur in the cast is 36 feet tall and more than 45 feet long from nose to tail.”
The stage show is based on the Emmy Award-winning BBC Television series that has been viewed by more than 700 million people, she added. The dinosaurs are made of steel skeletons covered with spandex and latex “skin.” It took more than a year to build the “creatures” in Australia, where the show debuted and toured for four months. The company has been on the road in America for 18 months and heads to Pittsburgh after it finishes in Jacksonville.
The baby T-Rex in the show made an appearance Tuesday morning as a surprise for a group of about 200 students from Oceanway Elementary School who thought they were going on a run-of-the-mill field trip to the Museum of Science & History (MOSH). By the time they got on the bus to go back to school, they had an up close and personal experience with a dinosaur.
Jonathan MacMillan, a self-described “suit puppeteer,” who operates the baby T-Rex in the show, graduated from the University of Southern California where he minored in musical theater. He said his father told him about the casting call for the production that included some specific requirements that assured the job was out of the ordinary.
“It said the part called for someone six feet tall, 170 pounds with strong legs and good cardio,” said MacMillan. “It was pretty vague other than that.”
Moving this offering from the Artist Series is “A first in my 17 years here,” said Marketing and Sales Director Karen Longacre. “It’s unprecedented for us and really for the entertainment industry because a show like this has never been done before.”
The show also presents a ticket-selling challenge for the Artist Series. The show was booked Wednesday-Sunday of Thanksgiving week to appeal to the family audience.
“There is a strong educational element and we think ‘Walking with Dinosaurs’ brings wonderful family entertainment for all ages to Jacksonville,” said Longacre, concerning the baby T-Rex’s appearance at MOSH, “Today is all about marketing. We have eight performances on Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday with 5,400 seats available for each performance. That’s twice the number of tickets we have for most of our touring productions.”
She also said the scale of the production and the scale of the venue allows every seat, including the lowest-price upper-level seats to offer a unique experience with the extinct reptiles.
“This show is bigger than anything anyone has ever seen in Jacksonville. If you’re sitting in the upper deck at the Arena, you’ll be at eye-level with the biggest dinosaurs.”
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