Working with Leicester City Council's Festival and Events Team, and Leicester City Football Club, Leicester based company Upstage Theatre Supplies were asked to help produce the Victoria Park Event, which was held on Monday 16 May, just two weeks after Leicester had won the title.
Upstage also found out, and had to keep the secret, that home -town rockers Kasabian were to perform a surprise gig of three songs to the audience that on the night totaled 240,000 people.
Terry Forryan, managing director at Upstage hit the ground running. This high profile event, which had attracted the interest of the world, would have to bring together the cream of industry professionals.
During the one-week build, 106 crew worked around the clock to pull together the event, which included 31 artics full of equipment, one 30 tonne crane, eleven generators and 3340 m2 of Trakway delivered to site.
Terry said, "As a Leicester boy, and having just taken over the running of Upstage, I was honored to be part of this event, but the pressure was on because the eyes of the world and the media were on us, and of course the expectations from everyone including the Leicester fans was very high. Building strong relationships with customers and suppliers is key; not only for this event but for Upstage too, that way everything runs as smoothly as possible. With the tight timescales we were working to, there was no margin for error." Terry added "We had such a fantastic team of people working on this project, and, although we were all working such long hours, we managed to keep the humour going.''
As well as helping to produce the event, Upstage supplied and built a tiered disability platform for 140 people, and built media platforms in the park, and along the parade route that the open top bus took which carried the Leicester City Team through the streets of Leicester.
They also provided 240m of Checkers cable protection and 32 crew for the in and the out. The VerTech stage was supplied by Star Events, with the PA by Britannia Row. The lighting, rigging and drapes was supplied by Hawthorn.
(LSiOnline)
