PREVIEW: “How to Train Your Dragon” Stage Show

Check out this impressive preview of one of the “cast members” from the upcoming $20 million-plus How to Train Your Dragon arena show that opens next March in Melbourne and Sydney. After striking out with the Shrek musical (which is performing better in London than New York), DreamWorks appears to be on the right track with its second stage effort. They’ve outsourced the show’s creative direction to the Sydney, Australia firm Creature Technology Company, the animatronics arm of Global Creatures, which previously created a successful arena show based on the BBC series “Walking with Dinosaurs.”

From the Brisbane Times:

[The show will include] at least 24 dragons for a show that will include acrobats and aerial artists, projections and flying creatures. The five-tier set will be backed by a 60-metre screen and the action will unfold on 1000 square metres of stage studded with projectors to provide an immersive experience. . . . ”DreamWorks didn’t want us to be the same as the film. They wanted us to create something new and magical,” [said the show’s director Nigel Jamieson.] ”We were looking for people with physical skills and humour, and clowning, but also with youthful skills. So we’ve very much taken up the hip-hop and parkour kind of thing. It’s a very different sort of cast and DreamWorks have been very supportive of that.”