Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Dragon Spectacular Brings Philly Gal Home, 9/12 - 16

Michael Latini, an accomplished puppeteer from Philadelphia, is coming home to perform in front of family and friends as one of the stars of the highly-anticipated How to Train Your Dragon Live Spectacular, coming to Wells Fargo Center for seven performances from Wednesday, September 12 through Sunday, September 16.

"I am so excited to be bringing this one of a kind event to Philadelphia. How to Train Your Dragons Live Spectacular is an amazing technical feat of theater that will entertain young, old, and everyone in between! How can you go wrong with massive animatronic flying dragons, fire ball explosions, football field sized projections, and a cast of 20 performers from around the world!" said Michael Latini, in anticipation of the upcoming run.

Latini grew up in Warminster, PA, north of Philadelphia, and attended Temple University’s Tyler School of Art. After graduating in 2001 with a BFA in Metals, Jewelry and CAD/CAM, he followed his dream of performing and building puppets. Since then, Latini has attended multiple puppetry workshops and conferences, becoming a skillful and talented puppeteer.

In 2003, he worked as the Build Manager as well as played the Audrey II puppeteer for the Little Shop of Horrors First National Tour in New York, NY. By 2006, Latini co-founded and became the production manager of Monkey Boys Productions (www.monkeyboysproductions.com) a puppet production company in Bristol, PA.

Now with 20 years of entertainment experience, Latini has become an expert puppeteer in over a dozen live family shows, including Walking with Dinosaurs, The Arena Spectacular, for the 2008-10 international tour. As a lead puppeteer, Latini rotated and controlled the auxiliary movements for 10 animatronic, life-sized dinosaurs. Over the years, Latini has built numerous puppets for shows such as Disney channel’s children television series Johnny and the Sprites and Monkey Boys Production of Go Diego, Go Live! for its national tour in 2006. 

Show times for How To Train Your Dragon at Wells Fargo Center are Wednesday, September 12 at 7 p.m.; Thursday, September 13 at 7 p.m.; Friday, September 14 at 7 p.m.; Saturday, September 15 at 11 a.m., 3 p.m., and 7 p.m.; and Sunday, September 16 at 6 p.m.

Tickets are available now exclusively through Comcast on line at ComcastTIX.com, by phone at 1-800-298-4200 or in person at the Wells Fargo Center box office.

Comcast-Spectacor (comcast-spectacor.com) is the Philadelphia-based sports and entertainment company which owns the Philadelphia Flyers (NHL), the home arena for both the Flyers and the NBA’s Philadelphia 76ers, the Wells Fargo Center, and four Flyers Skate Zone community ice skating and hockey rinks. In addition, Comcast-Spectacor is also the principal owner of Global Spectrum, the fastest growing firm in the public assembly management field with more than 100 facilities throughout the United States and Canada; Ovations Food Services, a food and beverage service provider; New Era Tickets, a ticketing and marketing company for public assembly facilities; Front Row Marketing Services, a commercial rights sales company; FanOne, a digital fan marketing company; and Paciolan, the leading provider of venue enablement, ticketing, fundraising and marketing technology solutions.

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