U2's iNNOCENCE + eXPERIENCE Tour is making its way around North America's arenas, and we're continuing our interview with creative director Willie Williams, who worked with set designers Es Devlin and Ric Lipson (Stufish), sound designer Joe O’Herlihy.
Live Design: Let’s talk a little about the creative team on this tour.
Willie Williams: The team is wonderfully diverse, being drawn from many different directions. Gavin Friday is executive director, though his role has been very hands-on during rehearsals. He has been a friend of the band since childhood and is a performer and artist in his own right. He has extraordinary instinct and radar about all parts of the production.
Es Devlin and Ric Lipson have been the set designers though this. Again, doesn’t begin to cover the scope of their work, having been my primary collaborators since the beginning of the project and through its many, many iterations.
Joe O’Herlihy has been a star, as usual, being audio director in unprecedented circumstances. Joe has worked with U2 for even longer than I have, and weaker men would have quit decades ago, given the parameters within which he has sometimes been required to work. The sound is one of the real stars of this show and was borne of the fact that the staging is spattered all over the floor of the arena, so a standard one-end PA system just wasn’t going to do the job.
Sharon Blankson is head of wardrobe but, having been part of U2’s lives forever, is also able to contribute to all areas, as is Morleigh Steinberg, officially the choreographer but again contributing to the whole show. “Smasher”—Stefaan Desmedt—completes the creative team, being the touring video director who directs the live camera switch whilst flying the plane with his left hand.
LD: What about working with two set designers. How do you all collaborate?
WW: Es, Ric, and I have enjoyed our collaboration enormously, particularly as we realize that we three are unlikely to work together again, it being unlikely that a show would hire two different companies to design a show.
It came about because by the time we began designing this show, I was aware that we were going to lose Mark Fisher, who has been an integral part of our lives for many years. As a strategy to help shoulder this loss, I invited Es to join the team and come to the first creative meeting with the band in March 2013. Mark was still well enough to come, and I was keen for Ric to come too, having enjoyed working with him on other projects. Initially, Es joked about not being sure what her role could be, as Mark was clearly the lead designer amongst us, so decided she’d be "the intern" and learn from the master. Ironically, and very very sadly, Mark died just three months later so, far from being an intern, Es’s presence has been a big part of helping to fill that void.
For me personally, it has been extremely beneficial to have the resources of two design companies to hand, particularly as Es’s studio and Stufish work in such completely different ways. I’m trying not to get too used to the idea. The division of labor has come about quite naturally, but the favorite times have been when it’s just the three of us "messing about" on paper.
LD: How does the everything in the design integrate, artistically and technically?
WW: The central piece is the screen-stage-bridge-lighting object that runs the length of the arena floor. It comprises a walkway between two walls of [PRG Nocturne] V-thru semi-transparent LED screen, with lighting trusses both overhead and below the walkway. It flies in and out and, via self-deploying stairs and a lift, is used by some or all of the band members at different moments, so it is an object that involves practically all the touring departments.
There are numerous songs where we create tableaux combining live humans, lighting, video content, and camera pictures. There’s one which is a nod to David Bowie’s Sound and Vision tour, where tiny, live Edge plays whilst standing in King Kong-sized video Bono’s hand. Another scene has all four band members in a line appearing and disappearing through manic day-glow yellow digital sash that Raff Bueno, our motion control chief, describes as “if Nine Inch Nails had a Mardi Gras float, it would look like this."
Other scenes, I really believe, are entirely unprecedented, like Bono walking 20' up in the air, along a surreal cartoon rendering of the street he grew up in, visible to both sides of the arena simultaneously. Then, just when we’re feeling comfortable, we go into a surround-sound Dublin car bombing, which is about the most visceral thing you can imagine. Certainly in rock 'n' roll, there just hasn’t been anything like this before, which is absolutely thrilling for a group of people who’ve been working together for over 30 years.
The concept of the arena sound system also had to be entirely reinvented for this tour, given the omni-directional nature of the performance and the fact of the band being all over the arena floor. Joe O’Herlihy and Clair started from scratch and, yet again, were prepared to be team players to a degree that would have sent most sound designers off in a sulk. Joe’s patience with me over the years cannot be overstated. If he’d dug his heels in and said it was impossible, then we simply couldn’t have done this. As a result, we have a show sound quality that is getting rave reviews in mainstream press. The sound is kind of everywhere, rather than blaring at you from one end.
A fantastic side effect of the speakers being spread all over the room is that it opens up the air space to an astonishing degree; the big black cloud has gone! When you come into the arena, you look up and feel like there isn’t really very much there, which is somewhat ironic given that this is the heaviest touring arena show in the history of live entertainment.
Read part 1 here, or continue to part 3.
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.