Walking with Darwin

We recently went with some friends to see the live puppet show "Walking with Dinosaurs" at Phillips Arena. When I say puppets... I mean three story tall, life size robot monsters. They were awesome.

The Dinosaurs ranged in size from little newborn dinosaur hand puppets to man sized suits for the Velociraptors (very awesome) even all the way up to a huge motorized Brachiosaurus. The "drivable" dinosaurs had a slim pod under their bellies were a puppeteer would sit to operate the giant puppet. They actually walked freely around the stage, that was the most impressive part.

The two Dinosaurs with the most personality were by far the crowd pleasing mother Tyrannosaurus Rex and it's baby. The offspring was another man sized suit. These were a great touch, their natural fluid movement made the minimal clunkiness of the giant robots a lot more palatable. (Even though we're of the opinion that there's nothing more charming than a clunky old clunker of a robot...) The mother's roar was tied directly into the sound system so it sounded amazing. We even got to see the crew testing out the T-rex robot/puppet after the show. You could see right down into the cockpit.

There was another aspect of this show that I really liked. It wasn't all about giant robots and rubber suits. They talked about Science and Evolution, these subjects were treated as matter of fact and not glossed over in any way. I know it's a show about dinosaurs, so they probably figured anyone who was in attendance was at least interested in the subject enough to be familiar with Evolution. However, we're in the south, and I am constantly amazed by how little respect the subject gets here.

I kept thinking about how many mothers in the audience had to quickly cover their children's ears when the Narrator made a big deal about modern day birds being the direct evolutionary descendants of the Dinosaurs.

Keep it up Darwin.