Most people do not expect to encounter a Chingonasaurus, Chicanosaurus T. Mex and Guacasaurus in Big Bend National Park. These imagined prehistoric figures, however, step into the role of storytellers, guiding audiences through questions of survival and identity across millions of years.
“Bilingual Dinosaurs!,” a play produced by Michael Mares Mendoza (journalism ‘96 and M.S. ‘22) and directed by Celeste Guzman Mendoza, blends augmented reality with oral storytelling to explore how migration shapes culture and memory.
Built from interviews across Austin’s creative and academic communities, the project invites participants to imagine themselves as dinosaurs. The interviewees reflect on environmental change, displacement and contemporary anti-immigration sentiment, with dialogue presented in both English and Spanish. The performance will take place Jan. 31 at the Boyd Vance Theatre at the George Washington Carver Museum.
“In contrast to a play where the characters are in dialogue with one another and there’s conflict … this is not that type of play,” Celeste said. “It is a real exchange of thoughts and ideas from the perspective of these leaders about migration and about the environment, through the lens of this story of dinosaurs.”
That exchange draws from both artistic interpretation and scientific research. Liam Norris, a UT paleontologist and exhibition and outreach associate at the Texas Science & Natural History Museum, contributed to the project as both a consultant and performer, bridging paleontology with personal storytelling.
“Science can be very intimidating for a lot of people,” Norris said. “If you present it in this more artistic light, that can give people an easier step in.”
During the performance, readers stand onstage wearing masks while projected footage of animated dinosaurs appears behind them. Each dinosaur corresponds to the creature imagined by the interviewee, speaking lines drawn from the local creatives’ interviews with Michael. Using augzoo, a location-based augmented reality platform he founded, Michael filmed the 3D-animated dinosaurs across Big Bend National Park.
“The readers are going to be in front and then there will be the projection behind them of their dinosaur while they’re speaking,” Celeste said. “It (allows) people to see metaphorical connections between how we’re living now and how the dinosaurs lived back then.”
Dinosaurs offer a compelling way to think about migration because their histories echo patterns that persist today, Norris said. Environmental shifts, resource scarcity and survival instincts shaped their movement, much like the forces driving human migration now, Celeste said.
“It’s special to think about (how) so long ago, these other beings that lived here were doing some of the same things that we do today,” Norris said. “Even with all this time, we’ve still got similarities that can make what most people just know as neat things you see in the museum feel alive.”
Beyond the stage, “Bilingual Dinosaurs!” continues through the augzoo app, which allows users to engage with the project digitally and imagine their own dinosaur narratives.
“I think you can redo this in different countries, this could be a creative exercise in itself,” said Michael. “Take this concept, and you do it in your community, and you interview the leaders there.”
