Bandit has serviced this dramatic event for some 10 years, and WWE’s current production and lighting designer, Jason Robinson, has been in the hot seat for six of those, designing sets and lighting for all WWE shows worldwide. It’s a completely different lighting concept to a conventional show. As the show is broadcast live on Sky television, the whole arena and audience has to be lit for television, as well as the live performance.
The Bandit team, led by Mark Powell, pooled considerable resources to pull off the Wembley show - effectively a one-off - which left the Bandit warehouse spectacularly devoid of gear - with six other major tours out. Over the ring, they rigged an 80ft octagonal truss, fully loaded with six-lamp bars, plus 48 Martin MAC 600s and 24 MAC 2000s. The mesh entrance ramp running from the stage to the ring was flanked with 36 MAC 2000s, 48 MAC 600s and 30 MAC 250s, and uplit from below with MR16 battens and other conventionals from above. The moving lights were operated by Ben Hay, using a WholeHog II, with Robinson running the conventionals from another Hog. The show utilized six Avolites 72-way dimmers and relied on eight follow spots - six in the house and two on the truss, all supplied by Bandit.
One of the most impressive lighting elements was an enormous ‘X’ - the ‘X’ from Insurrextion - at the stage entrance end of the show. This was constructed from pre-rigged truss sections and special customized parts from Tomcat, with the PRT rigged with its top pointing towards the audience. The pre-rig X was clad in red and grey cloth and lit from within by 70 individually circuited Par cans.
Bandit loaded-in on the Friday morning for a Saturday show with 5pm door, so it was a tight schedule, but Bandit’s crew of nine, plus two riggers from Dutch rental company Flashlight, had everything except the focus completed by the end of Friday night. The house riggers were Star Rigging, audio was supplied by Concert Systems and video came from XL Video.
(Ruth Rossington)
