Old Murder House Style

Jurassic Live: Dino Action Show closes its national tour with an Austin encore

Show mastermind, Sam Eidson

We can’t keep all the weird to ourselves, Austin — sometimes you've got to spread it out. Old Murder House Theater, the folks that brought you Aliens on Ice, are doing their part by taking their new show Jurassic Live: Dino Action Show around the country.

The tour kicked off at the State Theater in Austin and has gone all the way around the country. We’re talking all the way around: Houston, New Orleans, D.C., New York City, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Dallas. For the final show of the tour, Jurassic Live is back on home turf with an encore performance at the State Theatre on Tuesday, July 3.

The 13-person crew has been traveling the continental U.S. in a passenger van, one compact car and a box truck. The truck is filled to the brim with props, including six dinosaurs. Old Murder House isn’t known for taking it easy on their props either. “Hopefully by our second Austin show all our costumes will have blood stains and rips and our props and backgrounds will be rusted away and flimsy,” show mastermind, Sam Eidson has fantasized.

Booking your own DIY tour around the country isn’t easy: The crew sometimes has to rush from one city to another with little time for a visit. “We've seen some sights, but it's been hard to see the cities because we're constantly having to be on the road,” he shares. “In San Francisco we saw the Full House park, which was a highlight, and we just ate at Roscoe's Chicken N' Waffles in L.A.”

Luckily, there have not been any major setbacks on the tour (some of you may remember them almost burning down the Highball during their Back to the Future show). “No one has gotten their legs cut off by a rogue paper mache tommy gun or anything,” Sam Eidson brags. “There haven't been any major snafus or no car breakdowns.”

Technology of today certainly makes touring easier and so far the dinos haven’t been majorly lost or sidetracked. “Smart phones save lives, but we all have to share the juice from car chargers,” says Eidson. “It's a precious resource we all fight over, Mad Max-style.”

The reception of Jurassic Live has been great. Almost all shows have sold out and the team even had to add an extra show in Los Angeles. But is the rest of the country on the same page as Austin with humor? Do people even know what they are getting into when they buy a ticket for Jurassic Live: Dino Action Live? Eidson has found the audience reactions to be the most interesting part of this trip.

“All our audiences are different and have had different reactions to the show. Some audiences get what we're doing right off the bat, like D.C. and San Francisco, but cities like New York and Chicago took some time to figure us out. By the second half of the show we'd won them over.”

What’s next for Jurassic Live? Eidson doesn’t think they’ll be taking this show on an international trek, but he does have hopes to one day take a show overseas. “There's plenty of people in the U.K. who'd love a play version of Jumanji, I'd think.”

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The encore of Jurassic Live: Dino Action Show will take place at the State Theatre on Tuesday, July 3. Tickets are available here.

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Historic Austin museum will close for more than a year for restoration

Photo courtesy of the City of Austin

The Elisabet Ney Museum will close at the end of 2024 and reopen in mid-2026.

Every building needs some maintenance here or there, and the historic Elisabet Ney Museum needs some extra-special care. Formerly the art studio and residence of its namesake, it's been standing since 1892. It'll spend 2025 in relative solitude, as it undergoes renovation for a year and a half with no visitors allowed.

The museum will close to the public December 30, 2024, and open again in the summer of 2026 if all goes according to plan, a news release from the City of Austin shares. It'll be a quiet period compared to the 21,000 people visiting from around the world each year.

According to a museum overview on the city's website, Elisabet Ney, a European portrait sculptor, bought the property and called her new studio Formosa. She worked on sculptures depicting important Texans like Stephen F. Austin and Sam Houston, and collected works of European contemporaries.

The building at 304 East 44th St. includes 3,700 square feet of museum space, which was converted by Ney's friends after her death in 1907. It retains its unique look that juxtaposes a Neo-Classical main studio from 1892 with a later addition from 1902 including a tower for her husband, Edmund, to write in. It is also on 2.5 acres of land, which has largely been restored to its natural state with native species.

A press release lists these tasks (verbatim) within the scope of the new work, referred to as the Capital Improvement Project (CIP):

Restoration of original exterior wood doors and windows
Upgrades and replacement of the heating, ventilation, and air conditioning system
Replacement of the exhibit and general lighting systems
Repairs to the roof, masonry, plumbing, and interior finishes.

There will also be work to do outside of the building. Workers will replace the pedestrian bridge across Waller Creek, stabilize a 20,000-square-foot portion of the bank, and make the grounds more accessible by adding new pathways.

Funding comes from several sources, according to a release: "the 2012 Bond, Proposition 14, the Parkland Dedication Fund, the Historic Preservation Fund, Partners in Preservation through the National Trust, and contributions from the Friends of the Elisabet Ney Museum."

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