We present our work as science communication duo Geologise Theatre – two graduate geoscience researchers who use theatrical techniques and music to communicate scientific concepts to a range of audiences. Through our performances we explore the concept of the “science musical” – a show whose main aim is to educate about science but strays from the bounds of a regular lecture or lesson by incorporating dramatic techniques, including character and narrative, as well as music. Between 2017 and 2019 we developed and performed the hour-long science musical “What Killed the Dinosaurs?”, aimed at children (age 7+) and their families. We play science detectives with a habit of breaking into song, who must investigate the hypotheses for the cause of the dinosaur extinction. We are helped out along the way by our new recruits - the audience. We did three sets of performances, each time re-writing and adapting the show in response to audience feedback and evaluation. Here we present our process in developing this work. We explore the idea of agency - good drama requires characters to act on wants and desires that we can understand and connect to on an emotional, human level. So how can we dramatise inanimate scientific processes? Or stories set in the geological past before humans were around? We try to access these concepts using a whole host of characters, from a sing-off between a mammal and dinosaur competing to survive, to a father and son duetting about their discovery of a global iridium anomaly. We also present a qualitative assessment of the efficacy of a science musical as a method of science communication. While writing about science within the constraints of a song or storyline can present compromises between accessibility and accuracy, we find that narrative structures help to convey the ups and downs of the scientific process. Songs and music play an important role in summarising key ideas and making them memorable. We qualitatively assessed the children’s understanding through drawings and found that most came away having grasped the key concepts. In our science musicals, the burden of conveying information takes precedence over the core drivers of a solely theatrical work, but we can draw on the techniques that theatre and musicals offer in order to introduce emotional connection with the audience and better convey a complex scientific message.