Billy Elliot Star To Head Cast Of How To Train Your Dragon

After an exhaustive casting process throughout 13 major cities around the world, RZO Dragon Productions, Global Creatures and DreamWorks Animation are proud to announce the extraordinary cast of the unprecedented live entertainment event, How To Train Your Dragon Arena Spectacular.

Beginning its global tour in Australia in March 2012, high-flying, fire-breathing dragons will be brought to life in this epic arena adventure, which is inspired by the Academy Award® nominated DreamWorks Animation film, How To Train Your Dragon.

From the masterminds behind the phenomenon Walking With Dinosaurs – the Arena Spectacular comes one of the most ambitious live shows ever created. How To Train Your Dragon Arena Spectacular advances the technology to a whole new level, resulting in 24 larger-than-life, battle-ready Dragons. But it is the international cast of 23 performers who truly provoke emotion and ignite the imagination of the audience as they interact on-stage with these amazing beasts. Using aerial acrobatics, hip hop, dance, martial arts, parkour, and circus skills, the incredibly talented cast of performers will compete with, wrestle and even soar around the arena on the backs of these fantastical creatures.

“We travelled around the world twice searching for our amazing cast, auditioning over 2000 people. It was a long search but worth it. Our cast is really breathtaking. We have found the most extraordinary group of performers from across the globe, extreme athletes who can integrate their amazing skills into character and comedic routines, and in their own way astonish as much as the incredible dragons they are to perform with,” says Director Nigel Jamieson. 

From November 2011, the international cast will gather at Sydney’s Fox Film Studios in the vast vaulted space of the old show grounds ‘Hall of Creative Industries’. Here they will commence three months of intensive rehearsals and training alongside the 24 life-like dragons, towering up to 10 metres in the air, with the ability to breathe fire, fly, bank and turn, and take the breath away with the flick of a tail.

In a massive coup for Australia’s performing arts industry, two young Australian performers have been cast in the lead roles of Hiccup and Astrid for this worldwide production. Due to the intense physicality of these roles, two actors are required to share each of these roles.

Melbourne actor Rarmian Newton, who won a Helpmann Award for his performance in the Australian production of Billy Elliot the Musical (2008), will play the lead role of Hiccup, the unlikely Viking hero who makes a dragon his best friend. Rarmian has the epic challenge of flying around the arena on the back of an animatronic dragon, falling, being caught mid-air and at times hanging by a dragon fin!

“I let out a scream of joy when I found out I got the part!  It is definitely going to be a huge challenge - combining dance, acrobatics and acting and performing with giant animatronic dragons – but I couldn’t be more excited to take on this role of a lifetime!” says Rarmian Newton.  Joining Rarmian to share the role of Hiccup is young Hollywood actor Riley Miner, also an accomplished dancer and musical theatre performer.

Nineteen-year-old Queenslander Sarah McCreanor has been cast in the role of Astrid, the finest dragon slayer amongst the crew, who must possess the most impressive speed and prowess as a physical performer, with great command and attitude.

“Sarah is a young performer with a myriad of skills in dance, circus and acrobatics, also possessing amazing acting ability, with a real knack for comedy. Her portrayal of Astrid is really a sight to behold,” says Nigel Jamieson. 

Still a teenager, Sarah has starred in her own comedic dance shows and performed in a range of musicals and comedy shows. Sarah will share the role of Astrid with American stunt performer Gemma Nguyen, a third degree Black Belt and six-time world champion in Tae Kwon Do.

It is only fitting that the role of Stoick, Hiccup’s father and the rough and ready old-school chieftain of the brawny Viking tribe, be filled by a strong, stoic Australian bloke. Robert Morgan has been cast, a stalwart Australian actor who has starred in a host of acclaimed Australian films, including The Proposition, He Died with a Felafel in His Hand, The Craic, and Suburban Mayhem as well as on TV screens in Blue Heelers, City Homicide, Stingers and Hollowmen.

Gruff, grump, and crass, Gobber is the seasoned warrior appointed to drill the new recruits. Gobber means well, but he’s full of bad advice, which he dispenses freely and comically. American Will Watkins, a 6’6’’ tall actor and accomplished fencer, will star in the role of Gobber.

French kung fu champion and stuntman Godefroy Ryckewaert has been cast as Snotlout, Hiccup’s much despised cousin, the bossy bully of the teens and one of the more accomplished dragon-slayers.

Ruffnut and Tuffnut Thorston are rough-and-tumble teens in dragon-training with Hiccup, Astrid and Snotlout. Australian hip hop and break dancer Virackhaly Ngeth, best known as one of the Top 20 dancers in the first season of So You Think You Can Dance Australia, has been cast as Ruffnut. Tuffnut will be played by Sydney break-dancer Frace Luke Mercado, a founding member of SKB (Street Kulture Breakers), one of the world’s top break-dance crews.

Texan hip hop dancer and rapper Dexter Mayfield will play Fishlegs, the chubby, over-excitable teen who is Hiccup’s best Viking friend and who serves as a bumbling encyclopaedia of dragon-lore.

The compelling interactions between the cast of performers and the life-like Dragon creatures will be enhanced by an emotive musical score created by Hollywood composer John Powell, who received an Academy Award® nomination for his score of DreamWorks Animation’s How To Train Your Dragon in 2010, and Icelandic musician and songwriter Jónsi (of Sigur Rós). Jónsi wrote and performed a song on the original film soundtrack and is also writing and recording a special song that will communicate the heart and soul of the show.

The cast of performers will be assisted by an international technical team whose members have created many of the world’s most memorable spectacles – the projection artists behind the content for the Beijing Games and Vancouver Winter Olympics, the UK rigging company responsible for incredible aerial effects at the Athens Olympics Opening Ceremony, and an Australian team that first worked together at the Sydney Olympics.

The Dragons in How To Train Your Dragon Arena Spectacular have been created by Sonny Tilders and his team at The Creature Technology Company (the animatronics arm of Global Creatures). Included in the cast of 24 Dragons are reincarnations of all of the favourites from the phenomenally successful DreamWorks Animation film: Deadly Nadder, Gronckle, Monstrous Nightmare, Toothless the Night Fury and Red Death, which is the single largest animatronic creature ever made by The Creature Technology Company.

The arena spectacular will feature unrivalled production values, projections, flying, stunts, circus performers, fire and pyrotechnics. In one of the largest theatrical arena productions ever to go on tour, How To Train Your Dragon Arena Spectacular will have a touring cast and crew of 81 and require an unprecedented 40 semi-trailers to transport the production around Australia.

Hiccup: Rarmian Newton

Astrid: Sarah McCreanor

Stoick: Robert Morgan

Gobber: Will Watkins

Snotlout: Godefroy Ryckewaert

Ruffnut Thorston: Virackhaly Ngeth

Tuffnut Thorston: Luke Mercado

Fishlegs: Dexter Mayfield

This must-see arena spectacle will begin its world tour in Australia in Melbourne in March 2012 and tickets are on sale now. After playing in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane the production will tour to Auckland and then to the United States.