The stage's four legs arch out to embrace the audience, giving fans unprecedented and extensive access to the superstars on the pitch, while its gargantuan proportions carry the band's performance to every seat in the house.
This is one of the largest stages ever toured in any field of entertainment. The structure's central grid is raised 28m high, with legs traversing the width of the famous soccer pitch and a central antenna reaching as high as 5m.
The Stageco steel structure weighs 220 tons, excluding both the 90 tons of steel ballast that travels with each system and the rigging loads. Stageco has produced three identical systems for the band's world tour, each one taking a specialist Stageco team five days to erect (four days of Stageco building plus one day of production) and another two days to dismantle, before being packed onto 38 trucks for transportation to the next venue.
The story of how the stage made its journey from concept to completion is equally remarkable; it required the vision of the artists themselves, the inspiration of renowned stage and set designer Mark Fisher and his team at Stufish; the logistical and touring expertise of the show's production manager Jake Berry, and innovation by Stageco.
In October 2008 U2 "pressed go" on the 360ยบ tour project and Stageco was asked to start work on detailed structural calculations, including a practical modular design which would allow the system to be toured. "As it became clear what the designer and the band wanted to achieve it was obvious to me that this was something unprecedented," says Hedwig de Meyer, president of Stageco. "The sheer scale of the structure, the span of the legs, lifting the huge technical production 28m in the air, none of this has ever been done in our industry. The need to build and dismantle it in line with touring schedules added an extra dimension to the challenge."
Dirk de Decker is Stageco's project manager responsible for both the co-ordination of the developments and the logistics of touring the three systems to achieve the 24 dates in 15 cities that comprise the European leg of the tour. Each system has an experienced project chief on the road with it: Patrick Martens, Hendrik Verdeyen and Johan Van Espen.
"I was enormously proud when I first saw the structure erected ready for the first show in Barcelona," says de Meyer. "As we expected, it looked unbelievable. We have created a stage which is bristling with innovation. It is a testament to the skill and dedication of everyone at Stageco, Stufish, Jake Berry's production team, Enerpac and component manufacturers that this project has been successfully achieved. It is something that's unlikely to be recreated again for many years and it has moved the expertise in the entertainment production industry to another level."
There will be more on U2's current tour in the August/September issue of Lighting&Sound magazine.
(Jim Evans)
