Erth Brings 35 Years of Handmade Dinosaur Puppets to Sydney Opera
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- Erth has staged puppetry-based live dinosaur productions worldwide for more than 35 years, with an upcoming run at the Sydney Opera House currently in rehearsal.
- Artistic director Scott Wright frames the company's lifelike work as playing in the "uncanny valley," a sweet spot where the puppets appear real enough to suspend disbelief.
- The Sydney workshop blends traditional craftsmanship with modern tools, employing artists from varied creative backgrounds alongside 3D printers, custom backpack rigs, and animatronics built by head of design Steve Howarth.
- Erth makes a conscious effort to keep its work hand-crafted and "old school" in a world leaning into AI, a stance built into the studio's identity rather than just an aesthetic choice.
- Some of Erth's puppets transform or evolve between productions, including a Siberian tiger puppet that becomes a saber-toothed tiger for a different show.
- The team uses model toys as both props and reference points when scaling up to the full-sized creations seen in their productions.
Why it matters: Erth's 35-year commitment to handmade spectacle landing on a major venue like the Sydney Opera House signals a cultural counterpoint to digital and AI-generated entertainment. For family audiences and live-performance venues, the company's hand-built animatronics represent a tactile, analog craft that studios and theaters increasingly have to defend in pitches and budgets.
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