Supported by the production design and manufacturing house, Specialz, lighting designer Willie Williams comments, "Although I'm credited with the design of the sigils, in fact the original idea came from Robbie himself - quite literally as some of these symbols are tattoos that he has. For my part, we needed to turn these into something dramatic from a stage perspective, effective from a lighting point of view and durable for extensive touring." (A sigil is a sign or an image that supposedly possesses a magical power so any audience member who spent hours trying to decode them would have been wasting their time).
Production manager, Wob Roberts explains how Specialz got involved, "Specialz were originally commissioned to construct Sigils for the O2 show back in November 2012 both in the air and embedded in the stage decks. The ones in the stage decks were then replicated for the stage that went on to tour in 2013. Although the set was constructed by Brilliant Stages, we asked Dave Smith at Specialz to integrate his fabrication into the set and that proved to be the intelligent decision. In fact, Tony Bowern, Brilliant's general manager said to me, 'Specialz knew exactly what they were doing; the end result could not have been bettered.'"
"Basically, the sigils are lengths of rope light fashioned into shapes," comments Dave Smith, Specialz managing director, "However the key is ensuring that the rope light, which can be unreliable when handled constantly, is firmly secured into the routed stage decks. This means each deck becomes a lighting instrument and therefore more robust for touring with a dedicated distribution system and link leads to minimise handling of the rope lights and to make plugging up the system straightforward."
(Jim Evans)
