Dinosaur World Live US National Tour

With an interview like this, I think about a lot of different things.

As I've mentioned before, a lot of my friends, colleagues, and relatives are at a place in their lives where they have younger children or grandchildren, so I love highlighting things like this that can help spark an interest in live theatre.

But I'm doing these interviews to speak to those friends, colleagues, relatives, etc. who are looking for things to do with their kids/grandkids, rather than to the kids themselves.

That gives me the freedom to get to know performers like Lizzie as performers and learn about what they put into their performance in a way that I couldn't do if I had to keep it, as some Disney fans would say, “safe for magic".

As adults, we know that Lizzie's name is Lizzie—"Miranda" is simply a role she plays—and that dinosaurs are extinct, appearing on stage here through the work of dedicated human puppeteers.

But there's something special about how kids—especially little kids—don't see any of that.

When I was in Cub Scouts, probably around 10 years old, we had a meeting at the home of one of the other scouts.

We'd generally do those “in home" meetings because the parents would arrange something that couldn't necessarily be accommodated in our usual meeting spot: things like exotic animal demonstrations, magicians, and, in one particular case, a puppet show.

One of the puppets he had was a giant (at least to my 10 year old self) marionette of a flamingo-like bird. And it was incredible to watch him tweak the strings just right to get the most subtle motions out of that puppet.

Around the time he was demonstrating that, the homeowner's youngest child—a toddler—had gotten up from his nap and come to join us to see the puppet show.

Upon seeing him enter the room, the puppeteer beamed and explained to us that, while we can see him and the strings coming off the bird that he used to make it move, all that child could see was the bird, as though it were one of those exotic animal demonstrations.

I distinctly remember the puppeteer explaining that, to a child of that age, “the bird is real".

With that, he slowly had the bird walk over to the toddler, whose eyes widened.

When he touched the bird, the bird reacted to his touch, and he reacted to the bird's reaction.

It was clear as day that, to that child, that bird was just as real as any dog or cat he'd met.

That's some of the same sort of magic that this show is bringing to stages around the country.

While I certainly wouldn't want to spoil that for a child getting to experience it, the freedom of doing these interviews for the adults, rather than the kids, gives me an opportunity to pull back that curtain and get to know Lizzie as a performer who's working under those circumstances.

Just as with magicians, who also want to protect the magic of the experience (a bit more literally, in that case), I personally gain a greater appreciation for a performer when I get to pull back the curtain and really explore what they're doing on that stage and why.