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“You need to see the Iguanodon Restaurant, it’s awesome!”

“Fantastic palaeo-history storytelling from the Iguanodon Restaurant.”

“That is just too cool!”

Twitter comments at https://twitter.com/iggy1853

About the Show

The Iguanodon Restaurant is an outdoor theatre performance for families and school children set in a life size dinosaur. We have performed to a total of 20,048 people, the biggest audience being 1278 on a sunny August day in Hastings. The show lasts for 35 minutes and tells the story of the birth of geology in a fast and furious romp through 60 years of scientific discovery. As the story unfolds eccentric characters emerge from history; they compete for fame, laying claim to the biggest and most famous bones. They posed new questions that shook society: How come these creatures no longer exist? What does this tell us about the world we live in? And how old is humankind?

photo by Finbarr Webster

Watch the video trailer here:

We invite you to dine inside the belly of an Iguanodon. Guests will feast on a julienne of joviality… Scandalous skulduggery… Fossil-fuelled fun… A dessert of dinosaur delight!

It’s 1853, New Year’s Eve, and Crystal Palace Park dinosaur builders are preparing for a sumptuous banquet inside the concrete mould of an iguanodon. As we learn the story of ‘Iggy’, historical characters emerge; the finders of famous fossils and early ‘undergroundologists’ of England. Dinosaurs are very hot news; their discoveries are patronised by the rich and discussed by the famous, but what do they mean? As new, unsettling ideas of extinction and evolution emerge, blancmanges spin and birds fly from pies in the Iguanodon Restaurant!

The Artistic Team:
Sarah Butterworth – Artistic Director / lead artist / performer
Richie Smith – Writer and Director of Performance
Ed Jobling – Performer (Bill, Anning, Cuvier, Smith, Owen, Darwin)
Mike Bennet – Performer (Hawkins, Buckland, Mantell)
Georgie Rose Shire – Artist
Mike Pattison – Engineer
Jay Kerry – Maker, technician
Holly Miller – Artist
Shirley Pegna – Music

Many thanks to students at Arts University Bournemouth – Sarah Woollet, Mo Clouting, Heidi-Jo Heard, Eleanor Pollock, Lyddia Green, Amy Healy and Rimante Alisauskaite.

Emerald Ant has worked with scientists at the Jurassic Coast Team and our partners the Friends of Crystal Palace Dinosaurs to ensure our work is scientifically correct.

Tour dates 2016:

Lyme Regis Fossil Festival – 30/31 April

Nature Rocks, West Bay, Dorset – 11 August

Anonymous Festival, Dorchester – 27 August

Yorkshire Fossil Festival, Scarborough – 16, 17 & 18 September (tbc)

Lewes Fossil Festival – 25 September

Sidmouth Science Festival, Devon– 15 October

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