Andrew Blackman admits he was initially a little scared by the fierce-looking and very realistic T-rex.
Andrew Blackman admits he was initially a little scared by the fierce-looking and very realistic T-rex.
Playing the human star of the Walking With Dinosaurs live show is a dream role for Andrew Blackman. He talks to Rachel Bache.
How did you first get involved with Walking With Dinosaurs? I got the call from Global Creatures who asked, "Would you like to be Huxley our palaeontologist, our storyteller?" I said, "Yes, thanks very much, I would." It's always nice to get an offer when you're an actor and be invitedto come on board. It then of course went up to Europe and the UK, where there are different Huxleys and it came back to me for the North American tour, which was from June last year.
How does Walking With Dinosaurs compare to theatre acting? It's all based in the same sort of storytelling, in the same sort of truths, we're entertaining, engaging an audience. The show is like a snapshot of the past. Bringing that past and putting it on to the arena floor, asking an audience to just see what it was like to be in that time. I get very close to these giant dinosaurs and also the suited dinosaurs - the life-size Utahraptors and the baby T-Rex - but the conflict within this story is it's a fight for survival between herbivores and predators.
Do you get a chance to improvise in the show at all? Now, talking to me you might think that I do, as I ramble. But no, it's very tight, there's a little period for some improvisation, but it's very tight, the whole thing is very much like a score. The composition of the music for Walking With Dinosaurs is quite amazing in itself, each of the major dinosaurs have a light motif, I cite something like Star Wars - you know there's a creature coming in that's darker than the others, the "Darth Vader" sort of situation. So the dialogue that Huxley has really sits in amongst the choreography.
Have you ever been in a situation where you've almost been squashed by the big dinosaurs? Oh yeah, but you get out of that pretty quickly. You realise, "I'm in the wrong spot there, I won't do that again". The first time that I came and saw the T-Rex, when they fired the beast up, the thing looked incredibly real and with the music and the roaring, it did give me a fright to begin with. I'm much better with it now of course. But when I first saw the T-Rex it did give me a sense of fight or flight, and I wasn't about to stick around to fight.
Your favourite dinosaur? There are different parts of the show I like, but I particularly like the Ankylosaurus. He's quite an awkward-looking guy, he's the one that's very heavily armoured, he's got armour all over him and he has this 150lb ball of bone that he swings as his tail and he uses that to fend off creatures like the T-Rex. I like them all, it changes over time, sometimes I'll be really into Stegosaurus, really loving Steg and then sometimes the T-Rex is really so impressive, and the mumma T particularly because she comes in and protects her young from the Torosaurus and from Ankylosaurus as well. But Anky I really like - we give them all names.
Who: Australian actor Andrew Blackman. What:Walking With Dinosaurs: The Arena Spectacular, the Australian-created show featuring life-sized dinosaurs depicted as animatronic puppets. Where and when: Vector Arena, March 6-8.
