Bilingual Dinosaurs! Uses AR and Live Performance to Examine Migration, Identity, and Survival—Then and Now
Live Staged Reading | Saturday, January 31, 2026 at 7:00 PM
Boyd Vance Theater, George Washington Carver Museum
Austin, TX — At a moment when migration, borders, and belonging dominate public conversation in the United States, augzoo® presents Bilingual Dinosaurs!, a live staged reading that explores migration and adaptation through an unexpected lens: the imagined voices of dinosaurs living during the late Cretaceous period.
Rescheduled to Saturday, January 31, 2026 at 7:00 PM due to inclement winter weather, Bilingual Dinosaurs! brings together augmented reality, community interviews, and live performance to reflect on why beings migrate, what forces movement, and how language, memory, and identity shape survival—across deep time and into the present.
The project was developed through interviews with cultural leaders, activists, professors, immigrant artists, writers, musicians, and a paleontologist. Participants were invited to imagine themselves as dinosaurs—choosing a species, naming their dinosaur, and speaking from that perspective. These conversations move fluidly between humor and gravity, touching on environmental change, prehistoric migration patterns, and contemporary anti-immigrant sentiment.
A paleontologist from the University of Texas contributes insight into how scientists understand dinosaur migration, grounding the work in scientific research while opening space for metaphor and lived experience.
The live reading is accompanied by projected video footage of animated dinosaurs—each corresponding to the dinosaur imagined by an interviewee. From evolving Pachycephalosaurus to multiple Alamosaurus and Quetzalcoatlus, and a blue T. rex, the dinosaurs were created as 3D characters, textured and animated with talking performances by Karina Teruya. Using augzoo’s location-based augmented reality platform, the dinosaurs were deployed and filmed on location across Big Bend National Park, including Glenn Springs Primitive Road and the Window Trail.
The underlying AR technology was architected by Neema R. Rezaee, Chief Technology Architect and an augzoo® Founder, enabling digital characters to exist, perform, and be recorded within real-world landscapes.
Inspired in part by traditions such as Carpa theater, where humor and satire were used to educate bilingual communities, Bilingual Dinosaurs! balances levity with urgency—inviting audiences to consider migration not as an abstraction, but as a recurring, deeply human (and pre-human) condition.
Readers / Performers
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Michael Mares Mendoza — Deeno Deinonychus
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Donato Rodriguez — Chicanosaurus T-Mex, P.H.D. and Mayor Gus Garciasaurus
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Vanessa San Juanita Alvarado — Mery Guacasaurus and Representative Lulu Chingonasaurus
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Robert Salas — El Tiburón Mega-El Don, Dr. Austin Alamosaurus, and Professor Melitosaurus Rex Jr.
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Celeste Guzman Mendoza — Yerba Buenacoatlus and Lili Quetzapili
Bilingual Dinosaurs! is an augzoo® production, compiled from interviews and written by Michael Mares Mendoza, and directed by Celeste Guzman Mendoza. The work reflects augzoo’s Overland Method—a field-based, iterative approach to creative research that merges technology, place, and community collaboration.
This project is supported in part by the City of Austin Office of Arts, Culture, Music and Entertainment.
Event Details
Boyd Vance Theater, George Washington Carver Museum
Saturday, January 31, 2026
7:00 PM
For press inquiries, interview requests, or media access, contact:
Michael Mares Mendoza
michael@augzoo.com
augzoo.com