When puppeteer Raymond Carr gets the opportunity of a lifetime, to work on a big-budget show about the evolution of dinosaurs, he worries about how his creationist parents will react.

Raymond Carr is a Jim Henson Company trained puppeteer who has been performing for more than 15 years. He has traveled to every major city in North America and parts of Europe working on multi-million dollar productions. He is skilled in state of the art animatronics, Muppet-style puppetry, motion capture digital puppetry, and traditional theatrical puppetry. Raymond is one of the main characters for the Jim Henson Company's new show, Splash and Bubbles on PBS Kids.  Some of Raymond's other credits include: Nick Jr's Lazytown, Walking with Dinosaurs The Arena Spectacular Tour, various projects for Cartoon Network & Adult Swim, The Center for Puppetry Art, The National Black Arts Festival, and Bento Box Entertainment  He also performs improv with The Jim Henson Company's live show Puppet Up Uncensored.

This story originally aired on Nov. 30, 2018, in an episode titled “Moments of Truth”.

Story Transcript

In the summer of 2009, I found myself trying not to kill a man with a giant robot animatronic dinosaur puppet.  It wasn’t my fault.  He was the one that jumped the guard rails and put himself in mortal danger. 

Let’s take a step back, back to the beginning.  Back to the beginning of life on this earth.  Back 6,000 years ago.  What?  JK, you all.  I know that life on earth started around 3.6 billion years ago now.  I’m totally cool with it now.  You're welcome, science.  I believe you. 

So I've been a professional puppeteer my entire life.  I've had the privilege of, as you said, working on some really cool shows, but when I was 26 years old, I got the opportunity of a lifetime.  The fourth largest touring show in the world wanted me to join them.  At the time, the largest touring shows were like the Rolling Stones and U2 and Bruce Springsteen and a giant robot dinosaur puppet show. 

This was a big deal.  The show traveled with seventy-five crew members and twenty-five semi trucks and had a production budget of 20 million dollars.  And they flew their crew, i.e. me, to a new city every week.  This is coming from me who started out doing puppet shows for kids in churches so it was a bit of a step up. 

And to be clear, this isn’t like It’s-a-Small-World, Hall-of-Presidents style animatronics.  These were like sophisticated free-roaming creatures that were built by the same people that built the puppets for Jurassic Park and Star Wars.  Each creature cost about a million dollars, weighed about a ton each and were anatomically correct, so my brachiosaurus was about forty feet tall. 

We operated them with three different puppeteers, one inside of the creature driving it around and one operating the facial features and the sounds of it, and then one, myself, operating the body of the puppet using the sophisticated and highly sensitive animatronic interface that kind of looked like a metallic spinal cord with a motorcycle handle at the end of it.  All of this was in service of educating and entertaining people about evolution of the dinosaurs throughout the years.  This was a very serious puppet show. 

But when I go the news, I was terrified of telling my parents.  I mean, what would they think?  What would their friends think?  Despite their best efforts, their child believed in evolution. 

See, both my parents are ordained ministers and I think the world of them.  I was homeschooled in a conservative Christian environment.  This was a place where we learned about creation science through the lens that God created the earth 6,000 years ago and seven days, period. 

Now, pro tip.  If you're ever debating somebody who believes in creation science, it’s not that they don’t believe in science, period, it’s just that they see scientific information through a very narrow lens.  And I’m going to be honest.  It’s like me, who’s someone who believes in evolution now, it’s kind of the same way.  I don't really understand all the details behind carbon dating but I just go with it assuming that the earth is billions of years old.  I act on it on faith.  So for me, this was a big deal trying to inform them that I was going to do this. 

A quick overview on what creation scientists believe about the explanation of dinosaurs.  And to be clear, we didn’t believe silly stuff like Jesus rode dinosaurs or God put dinosaur bones under the earth to test us or stuff like that.  We believe seemingly well thought-out theories based on ancient biblical text.  So bear with me. 

God created the earth in seven days.  On the sixth day, God created all the land animals, including dinosaurs and humans.  At the time, there was a firmament or a layer of moisture around the earth that basically blocked harmful radiation from the earth that’s causing animals to get larger and live for longer periods of time.  Adam lived about 800 years, dinosaurs grew big and tall. 

After a while, man became evil and junk and God decided to flood the earth.  He did that by causing the moisture on the sky to come down to the earth.  Noah built an ark and got all the animals into the ark, including all the dinosaurs.  Not, every species of every dinosaur but every kind of dinosaur which could be narrowed down to about fifty.  He took all the adolescents and babies onto the ark and thus surviving the flood. 

After the waters receded, this is how we get all of our fossils in the ground.  After the waters receded, the dinosaurs came out and lived amongst humans for several generations but since they didn’t have the protection layer of the firmament around them, they died off after several generations but not before man interacted with them.  That’s how we get the explanation of the behemoth and the leviathan in the Bible and dragon myths throughout the world.  Get it?  Got it?  Good. 

And it was this pseudo science that I was about to embark on that I had been taught my entire life that I was going in direct contradiction to what I was about to start doing. 

So it was a Saturday.  I remember it was a Saturday because we had three shows on Saturdays and I was exhausted.  At the end of my time on this tour, I performed this production 800 times.  But despite that, the repetitive nature of live theater I couldn’t really phone it in.  I had to pay attention every time because, with my animatronic interface, I operated about a hundred yards away.  And we performed in giant arenas like Madison Square Garden and the Staples Center and the Philips Arena.  So if I moved the wrong way or missed a cue, I could send my 40-foot tall brach into the audience or into another crew person. 

So I was very tired.  Then I heard on the radio headset the stage manager go, “Oh, my God.  Nobody move.  Nobody move.”

From a distance, very far away, I could see a tiny little man jump over the guard rail, run up to my dinosaur and start to climb it to mount it.  At the time, the only other human character on stage was this paleontologist who basically narrated your journey through prehistoric era.  He was kind of this Indiana Jones style cross between a Broadway star and an action hero. 

So the paleontologist took a moment in between his monologues, saw the renegade gate jumper and made a beeline straight for him.  Our jackass hero was at a crossroads.  With security coming in from behind and an angry fake paleontologist coming in from the front, and a terrified animatronic puppeteer operating and trying not to hurt him a hundred yards away underneath him, he did the only thing he could do.  He made a beeline for the exit only to have security tackle him and put him in cuffs. 

After the moment, the paleontologist, in true show-must-go-on fashion, made a quick quip to the audience and continued on as if nothing has happened. 

There's a certain kind of adrenaline that pumps through your body when you have to hold something so sensitive so firmly.  By the end of the show I was exhausted.  I don't remember much about what happened next.  The stage manager came and told us what little information she had about him. 

The one thing I do remember, and probably will never forget, is his explanation.  When asked why he did what he did, all he said was, “I just wanted to hug a dinosaur.” 

And you know what?  I kind of understood where he was coming from.  I mean, bear with me now, but this was his one chance to really get it up close and personal with the real thing.  He could really embrace the thing that we've all loved for so long.  It’s a bit of a stretch but…

When people home school their children, it’s generally in the hopes that they're going to impart a specific world view on their children for the rest of their lives.  And for me to take this job, in a way, was an acknowledgement that my parents’ sacrifices of home schooling me were in vain.  So despite all that, I decided to take the metaphorical leap from my childhood over the guardrail into adulthood.  It’s a bit dramatic but you get what I’m saying. 

To their credit, my parents shocked me with how cool they were.  They were not only supportive but they were very encouraging.  To this day, I don't really understand why, although in hindsight the hefty paycheck probably helped to do with that.  But just like that, my parents evolved. 

Science asks more questions than it provides answers and it forces you to be okay with that.  It’s not reliant on one specific world view or tradition.  When we learn new information, we have to adapt and move forward.  Even if that information is that our badass childhood heroes probably look more like giant chickens than dragons, we still have to deal with that fucking information.  Feathers on raptors?  Come on, science! 

But just like that gate jumper, science doesn’t care, so you might as well hug it out.