Avengers prepare to unite, this time with a little help from Star-Lord, Groot and friends

Getting blown up by Iron Man isn’t that bad, really. Once you get used to the noise, it’s no big deal. And the explosions don’t even look that big from up close. From the audience, the pyrotechnics in “Marvel Universe Live! Age of Heroes” look huge.

Seth Carnes usually sees them from the stage, though. He’s in the touring show’s ensemble, meaning he plays Ravagers and Stone Soldiers – the bad guy minions who swarm the show’s heroes, then are quickly punched, blasted or blown up.

From Carnes’ perspective onstage, he doesn’t witness the way the lights, the effects and, yes, the pyrotechnics come together to create the “Marvel Universe Live!” show-biz illusion.

“Not many of us have actually seen the whole show start to finish because we’re in it,” he says. “There are times where either someone gets down or they’re sick for the day, or sometimes they aren’t needed that day, and they sit out and watch the show. They come back, and they’re like, ‘This show is super cool-looking.’ “We’ve never seen how the lasers and everything interact with us.”

When “Marvel Universe Live!” comes to PNC Arena for five shows Jan. 25 through 28 (and then to Greensboro Coliseum Feb. 8 through 11), Carnes will be on home soil. The 29-year-old was raised in Greenville and still calls the eastern North Carolina city home. Now that he tours with “Marvel Universe Live!,” Carnes doesn’t see his apartment for months at a time.

Still, life on the road is a good fit for Carnes.

“It was one of those things I knew I had to do,” he said. “I wanted to travel. I wanted to get into this career of acting and filming, and that’s pretty much the life.”

Carnes started out in gymnastics, which he started at the age of 6 at Rose’s Gymnastics Training Center in Greenville. By 17, he was a coach at Rose’s. His plan, though, had been to go into music. A car crash two weeks before his high school graduation derailed those hopes. Before long, Carnes was a full-time personal trainer and gymnastics coach.

“In that time, I started trying to do small-time film,” says Carnes. “I’d go to Wilmington and go to Charlotte and just do small acting gigs there.”

His goal was to become an actor, and he felt stunt work could be a gateway to that. In addition to his gymnastics background, he knows martial arts. He can leap and flip and stage-fight and, at 6-feet and about 175 pounds, he fits a lot of body types.

Carnes also got involved in North Carolina’s statewide Parkour scene. Some of his friends from this tight-knit community got cast in the first “Marvel Universe Live!” tour. Once he learned they would be touring overseas, Carnes decided he needed to audition for the show.

“Most of (my friends) were Spider-Mans or they played Iron Man. They were all really acrobatic, and they could do all the flips,” he says. “That was right down my alley. Getting paid to jump around and play-fight for a few days of the week and then get to travel and see all the cities, that was the huge appeal.”

When Carnes got his callback, he learned that he would be an understudy for Groot, the plant-man from “Guardians of the Galaxy.” Groot is making his debut in the production, alongside other Guardians characters Star-Lord, Gamora, Rocket and Drax. (On top of playing this character and various minions in the ensemble, Carnes also understudies Dr. Strange and the villainous Loki.)

To play Groot, who towers over the other characters, Carnes had to learn to walk on 3-foot-tall drywall stilts. The costume, too, takes some getting used to. It’s covered in molded pieces that look like bark, and breathing in the form-fitting mask took some getting used to.

“When I first put it on, I felt like I was wrapped up. Your hands are not your hands. You have extensions with puppeteer hands. You can’t access anything,” says Carnes. “Once you’re buttoned up, it takes two people to unbutton you and get you pulled out.”

Now that he’s had some practice in the Groot suit, however, wearing it has become second nature.

“Marvel Universe Live!” is more physically demanding than his old gymnastics coach job. The biggest difference is in Carnes’ responsibilities. As a gymnastics coach, he was responsible for 80-odd kids daily, or close to 400 weekly. Many of those students might be in the audience when “Marvel Universe Live!” stops in Raleigh and Greensboro, watching their old coach explode or get knocked over by Black Panther.

As for Carnes, he’s excited to return to his home state, but he’ll also be ready to get on the bus when it’s time to move on to the next town. At this point, he’s accustomed to tour life. Carnes is where he wants to be – traveling the country and doing stunt work for a living.

“Don’t be afraid to leave home for awhile,” he says. “You come back, and it’s gonna be the same. You might miss a few things here or there, or there might be a new store on the corner, but it’s still home and it’s not going to never feel like home.”

This story was originally published January 26, 2018 at 12:41 PM with the headline "Avengers prepare to unite, this time with a little help from Star-Lord, Groot and friends."