The Live Experience,” comes to UMass March 27.There is something about dinosaurs that brings out the kid in many people. Films like “Jurassic Park” have thrived by tapping into that state of wonderment when it comes to the long-extinct beast. Now there is an all new live show that brings the dinosaurs back like never before.
“Walking with Dinosaurs: The Live Experience,” is a 90-minute journey that features 15 life-size dinosaur puppets walking around the arena in a realistic history lesson that chronicles the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous.
Based on the award-winning BBC documentary of the same name, “Walking with Dinosaurs” storms into the Mullins Center for seven shows over four days starting on March 27.
Justin Terry, a 2007 graduate of the University of Northern Colorado with a degree in theater, knows better then most what goes through a dinosaur’s head. Terry is the suit captain as well as a performer for the show. Running a small team of five, he and “his boys” are the performers inside the suits of the three Raptors, one Liliensternus and the baby T-Rex.
“When I graduated [I] went to an acting show case in Los Angeles and the casting director [for “Walking with Dinosaurs”] was there,” said Terry in a phone interview. “He looked over my resume and a couple of things on there were what they were looking for. The director called me and I did an audition. He told me some of the perks of the job and I got it.
“I never really had a plan after college but I never saw me playing a dinosaur – that’s for sure,” he said. “The first couple of months on tour I would be backstage waiting to go onstage and looking out through the dinosaur suit and realize, ‘So this is my life right now.'”
As suit captain, Terry deals with the upper management as well as setting schedules and training. The five small dinosaurs are all self contained puppet units, meaning one person per suit. From the inside the puppeteer/performer controls body, eyes, mouth and sound effects.
“When I first got here, we did a month and a half of training
