Es Devlin On U2’s Innocence + Experience, Part 2

Photo courtesy of Es Devlin

 

Read part 1.

U2’s Innocence + Experience tour stage is scaled back from the 360 tour design, sure, but that's not saying much considering the sheer scope of that tour. "Scaled back" is relative. This time around, in arenas and not stadiums, the tour features a hugely dominant screen, catwalk, and B-stage—still plenty going on.

Creative/set designer Es Devlin, working alongside Ric Lipson of Stufish Entertainment Architects on the set and with U2 creative director Willie Williams, emphasizes that the stage design came out of early meetings about the story of the show and its meaning and message. "We focused our meetings on what we wanted the audience to feel and what we wanted to communicate to the audience, and once we had worked out the overall arc of the show from that point of view, the forms of stages evolved to fit the story," Devlin says.

One of Es Devlin's set sketches

 

U2's latest work, notes Devlin, was conceived as a diptych: Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience, the first, the name of the band's latest album, and the second currently being written. Incidentally, William Blake published an illustrated collection of poems by the same name in the late 1700s. "The stage forms reflect this: The house and the world, the rectangle and the disc, based on the band's ideas," says Devlin. "Ric designed the graphic for the tour logo, and the 'I' of Innocence made its way onto the rectangular stage while the 'e' of experience imprinted the circular stage. So they became known as the 'I' and 'E' stages, which is more appropriate, really in this case, than 'main and b' because the band really do spend an equal amount of time on all three stages."

The third stage is the divide, as it literally divides most arenas in half. "The band enjoyed the idea of playing with this as a metaphor for what some of the band's actions tend to do to their audience: Divide it," says Devlin. "And it really is used as a stage for much of the show. The band really embraced this central divide performance area, and Larry particularly found ways to play drums while facing both directions and using kit that would work on this central divide stage."

Photo courtesy of Stufish

 

All band members take advantage of the full set during the show. "There is much of the show when the four band members span the entire length of the arena, allowing every section of the arena to feel close-up to the band at once, especially because Joe O'Herlihy's innovative sound system is doing the same thing: playing directly to every section of the crowd at once," adds Devlin.

The Great Divide

A PRG Nocturne V-Thru LED screen—Devlin calls it "another barrier"—hovers over the divide stage and works to unite and divide the audience. "While hovering centrally, it behaves like a giant billboard, preaching to the crowd, offering a clear sight line pretty democratically throughout the arena," she says. "We all feel that its in our face." Images are delivered to the production's various screens via two d3 Technologies d3 4x4 media servers.

When the screen lowers and sits on the stage, it divides the standing audience. "They can't see one another from either side of this now extruded divide," says Devlin. "The standing tickets are sold as 'North Side and South Side,' the way so many cities are divided along tribal lines, and the metaphor of a barrier division at the center of this show is not lost on many."

Devlin, who calls Williams "one of the masters of the art of concert lighting and, above all, a master of the art of restraint," points out the much smaller lighting rig on this tour. "He works miracles with that restricted palette and his, Alex Murphy's, and Sparky Risk's genius for timing." She adds that the video is limited as well in some respects. "The band really wanted to restrict the palette of the video content to the work of two hands: one for innocence and one for experience," she says. "Oliver Jeffers from Belfast, who is a friend of the band and is an extraordinarily fine artist who makes beautiful books for children, was the ideal artist to draw the chalk drawings/collages that speak of 'innocence,' while Willie and Sam Pattinson, head of Treatment, the content producer for the tour, found Jeff Frost, a digital/time-lapse video artist from Utah, who created much of the content for 'experience.'"

One of the most remarkable aspects of the tour is how much it has kept to the original plan from early meetings. "It's extraordinary, but on this show, more than most others, the show really does look remarkably like it did on paper," says Devlin. "All the ideas evolved in rehearsal, and the video content was very much refined during the weeks of rehearsal in Vancouver and still continues to evolve as the tour progresses. It's very much still alive."

Photo courtesy of Stufish

 

Devlin calls to mind a specific moment in the show. "The fluorescent light tubes fly to form a constellation of horizontals and verticals," she says. "If you are looking, you can read them as incidental crosses. This element of the design is an homage to the late and very great Mark Fisher, who worked closely with us at the beginning of the process and who shared with us so much insight. During one of the final meetings that Mark attended via Skype, we reached a bit of an impasse, and in an effort to reboot our process, we asked one another, 'If we could place one object, any object, any icon in the middle of this empty arena model that was sitting on the table in front of us, that would do the whole job—epitomize this band, its work, and its manifesto—what would it be?' Silence, and then a voice over Skype, the unmistakable voice of Mark Fisher: 'a fucking cross.'"

Photo courtesy Es Devlin

 

Devlin also specifically mentions members of the team who make it all possible: "the extraordinary and fiercely talented [production manager] Jake Berry, who has a superhuman power with numbers and such a keen sense of showmanship; the beautiful and much missed tour manager Dennis Sheehan; the other members of the 'board' of U2 Creative: Gavin Friday, the show's executive director, an extraordinary artist in his own right and with the Virgin Prunes, and a massive leading part of the U2 creative process; along with Morleigh Steinberg, who works on the stage direction and choreography and is another major player in the process; Sharon Blankson, who has a big influence on the overall arc and concept of the show as well as creating all the bands styling; and as I mentioned earlier, the genius sound designer that is Joe O'Herlihy, who has once again shifted the paradigm of live sound with this sound system design. It's a mark of this band's extraordinary generosity of spirit that this group of incredibly talented creative souls have been part of their team for such a sustained period of time and that they have been so welcoming to me and Ric as the newest members of the team."

Check out our full coverage, sponsored by SHS Global at our Project In Focus on U2's iNNOCENCE + eXPERIENCE Tour here, and check back often for continuing updates.