Yank the video game controllers from their tiny grips. Flick off the cartoons. Pack away the toys.
Several kid-friendly arena shows will roll into town soon, giving parents three good reasons to coerce young ones out of the house. Let Elmo’s giggle, Dora’s bilingual charm and towering life-size dinosaurs do the heavy lifting.
Dora the Explorer Live! Search for the City of Lost Toys
Many preschoolers can’t get enough Dora, the Latina star of the animated series “Dora the Explorer.” In this stage version, Dora takes on an in-the-flesh persona courtesy of actress Susan Oliveras. The rest of the cast is made up of a mix of live actors, costumed actors and puppeteers playing the parts of popular characters like Diego, Boots the monkey, Swiper and others. The premise is this: Dora and her pals are searching for her teddy bear. With some interactive help from the audience, Dora and company use numbers, language and reasoning to track down teddy. And Dora uses her bilingual smarts to introduce the audience to Spanish words and phrases.
7 Friday; 11 a.m., 2 and 5 p.m. Saturday; 11 a.m., 2 p.m. Sunday. $12-$39. Fox Theatre, 660 Peachtree St. N.E., Atlanta. 404-249-6400, www.ticketmaster.com.
Sesame Street Live Elmo’s Green Thumb
“Sesame Street” lovers can live their Muppet fantasies as characters such as Elmo and Big Bird spring to life on stage. Well, they’re really actors and dancers in costumes, but who cares. (The costumes are killer and the character voices are the same you hear on television.) This Broadway-style production allows the “Sesame Street” citizens to spin a story using dialogue, song and dance. Elmo is searching for a new home for his sunflower, Sunny. Budding fairy, Abby Cadabby, works some magic to make Sunny grow, but accidentally shrinks Elmo, Telly, Zoe and other characters. Stuck in Big Bird’s garden, the now pint-size gang gets an up-close look at our ecosystem courtesy of hoofing ladybugs, butterflies and beetles.
7 p.m. Sept. 17; 10:30 a.m., 7 p.m. Sept. 18; 10:30 a.m., 2 p.m., 5:30 p.m. Sept. 19; 1 p.m., 4:30 p.m. Sept. 20. $14-$40. Philips Arena, One Philips Drive, Atlanta. 404-249-6400, www.ticketmaster.com.
Walking with Dinosaurs — The Arena Spectacular
The Gwinnett Arena becomes a virtual Jurassic Park as a cast of 15 life-size dinosaurs, some towering nearly 40 feet in height, move about the arena floor. An actor plays the part of Huxley, a paleontologist, who narrates the production dishing the dirt on each dino. With help from puppetry and animatronic technology, the dinosaurs walk, turn their heads, slash their tails, chomp, blink and roar. Show creators enlisted some of the best to help bring the dinosaurs to life. And since the creatures are so big, show producers say there isn’t a bad seat in the house.
7 p.m. Sept. 23-25; 11 a.m., 3 and 7 p.m. Sept. 26; 1 and 5 p.m. Sept. 27. $24.50-$64.50. The Arena at Gwinnett Center, 6400 Sugarloaf Parkway, Duluth. 404-249-6400, www.ticketmaster.com.
–Jon Waterhouse, for the AJC
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