Paleontology! at the Vivian Beaumont

Join us for weekly theater news, delivered a little louder for the people in the back. [vulture logo](   [Stage Whisperer]( Editors Note: We thought you’d enjoy a preview of our recently-launched Stage Whisperer newsletter. [Sign up now]( to read the full version and to receive future editions. From Dinosaurs to the If/Then Stage Door Hello from the liminal space between everything opening on Broadway and the announcement of the Tony nominations. I spent Sunday night at Off Broadway’s Lucille Lortel awards, sitting directly behind Bill Camp and Elizabeth Marvel, which is the way I prefer to experience everything. A fun part of the ceremony is that you can tell where people affiliated with each nonprofit are sitting by the volume of the cheers for each show. It was a big night for the Atlantic Theater Company, audibly occupying its area at the bottom right of the NYU auditorium. Its production of [Kimberly Akimbo]( (a show that is headed for Broadway this fall, and likely more awards next spring) won Outstanding Musical as well as acting awards for Bonnie Milligan and Victoria Clark, and its co-production with the Roundabout of [Sanaz Toossi’s English]( won Outstanding Play. The haunting Oratorio for Living Things also won three awards, prompting several return trips up to the podium from creator Heather Christian, reading prepared statements since her award-winning ensemble was off performing. David Henry Hwang was inducted onto the Playwrights’ Sidewalk, and celebrated AAPI playwrights of the past, present, and future. Shannon Tyo won Outstanding Lead Performer in a Play for The Chinese Lady and kept breaking into joyful, involuntary laughter during her speech. As a presenter, Jeff Hiller went to town making fun of the awkward transitions he read from a Teleprompter. Receiving the Lifetime Achievement Award, Deirdre O’Connell gave thanks to New York’s rent-stabilization laws, her true secret to a long Off Broadway career. —Jackson McHenry   Photo: Lincoln Center A lot of weird things happen over the course of the three hours of The Skin of Our Teeth: an Ice Age, a flood, a war, several radio announcements and dance breaks, fourth-wall-breaking asides to the audience, even a bit of onstage vaping. But the breakout stars of the show (alongside Gabby Beans’s [Eartha Kitt–doing–Yzma](–level voice work) are the creatures who have been dead for eons. In Act I, we meet the Antrobus family in Excelsior, New Jersey, in the midst of an Ice Age, and they happen to live alongside a gigantic brontosaurus and a mammoth, both of which they treat like ordinary housepets. Photo: Lincoln Center The puppets, it turns out, were designed and built by James Ortiz, whose large-scale work has previously appeared, among other places, in the Public’s Public Works version of Hercules. He’d previously worked on [a production of The Skin of Our Teeth in Baltimore](, and he says that when he heard that LCT was doing its own he “put out feelers” to see if they would use puppets too. (Often they’re just played by [actors in mascot-style suits](.) Then, he heard from director Lileana Blain-Cruz, who told him she did indeed want puppets, and wanted to go big. “Her approach was, let’s not stylize them too much. Let’s not make them a broom and an eyeball. Let’s mean it,” Ortiz said. “There’s a scale of this theater where you just go, we’re not going to kid our way into doing this.” Thornton Wilder doesn’t specify a species of dinosaur in his script, but Blain-Cruz decided that she wanted a brontosaurus to get [the “Jurassic Park moment”]( of seeing such a large creature enter the doorway of the Antrobuses’ home and fill up the Vivian Beaumont’s stage. Both puppets are made of “a type of foam that’s somewhere in between a mouse pad and craft foam from Michael’s,” according to Ortiz, which is to say that it’s light but stiff enough to build a large shape. The dinosaur’s skin is composed of a synthetic fabric that has been heated and puckered to resemble scales, and the mammoth’s fur is torn up pieces of dyed terrycloth “so that it has a delicious bounce and movement to it.” It takes three people to operate the dinosaur (Jeremy Gallardo, Beau Thom and Alphonso Walker Jr.), whereas the mammoth is a solo job (done by Sarin Monae West). In the case of the dino, the actors sync their movements by breathing. “An inhale lets everyone know something is going to happen, and the exhale is that action,” Ortiz says. They’re on a live mic so the audience hears the big creature breathe in and out. “The fact that the puppet is breathing is the first beginning to making it live.” Photo: Lincoln Center Ortiz developed the creatures’ movements in rehearsals, giving the puppeteers space to imbue the beings with personality once they figured out the basics of the blocking. They’re cuddly: They vie for the Antrobuses’ attention like dogs looking to be petted, and even get into hijinks in the house, trying to steal the hat of a telegraph deliverer or climbing up on an ottoman. Occasionally, they break sauropod character to talk back to the Antrobuses, acting insulted when referred to as “stupid animals.” “We let those grace notes be grace notes, and have the behavior be pets,” Oritz said, “Because that behavior makes them all the more endearing. Our lizard brains in the audience go, ‘That’s my dog!’” Ortiz developed the creatures’ movements in rehearsals, giving the puppeteers space to imbue the beings with personality once they figured out the basics of the blocking. They’re cuddly: They vie for the Antrobuses’ attention like dogs looking to be petted, and even get into hijinks in the house, trying to steal the hat of a telegraph deliverer or climbing up on an ottoman. Occasionally, they break sauropod character to talk back to the Antrobuses, acting insulted when referred to as “stupid animals.” “We let those grace notes be grace notes, and have the behavior be pets,” Oritz said, “Because that behavior makes them all the more endearing. Our lizard brains in the audience go, ‘That’s my dog!’” [SIGN UP FOR THE NEWSLETTER](   [Vulture]( [Facebook]( [Twitter]( [Instagram]( This email was sent to {EMAIL}. View this email in your browser.]( Opt out of marketing emails [here](. Reach the right online audience with us For advertising information on e-mail newsletters please contact AdOps@nymag.com [unsubscribe](param=daily) | [privacy notice]( Vox Media, LLC 1201 Connecticut Ave. NW, 12th Floor Washington, DC 20036 Copyright © 2022. All rights reserved.