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Westlife Turnaround with LiteStructures
The current tour by Irish boy band sensations Westlife features an innovative stage set co-designed and built by staging specialists LiteStructures.
Originally designed for a Westlife of five people, the set comprises five circular platforms, linked together by curved ramps, each platform featuring a central man lift/ trap door. Following Bryan McFadden’s departure, the central platform became an extra stage entrance for all four members of the group.
The idea for the set came from the band members themselves, with Steve Levitt of long-term production company Production North and LiteStructures’ Chris Bridges helping to develop the concept. “The boys in Westlife have lots of ideas,” says Steve. “They get great pleasure from our many round-the-table discussions prior to the start of a tour. Although some of the ideas are well off the mark, some are a challenge which we endeavour to make happen for them.”
The team of Levitt and Bridges came up with the five circle set after practical consideration of the available venue space and the time taken to build the set on-site. A particular challenge for LiteStructures was the manufacture of the walkways between the circles. Chris explained: “Manufacturing certain curved set pieces for stage sets is notoriously challenging, for instance it’s difficult to draw up a series of accurate measurements and components for a curved ramp which will also take up valuable design time you don’t usually have. Being able to draw upon previous experience of building similar set pieces to overcome the problems they cause is invaluable.”
However, LiteStructures’ pièce de résistance is a circular Perspex stage suspended at the end of a Nico mesh panel walkway. The whole structure is lowered from the roof of the arena for the four songs immediately prior to the encore, with the Perspex floor giving the fans a true close-up view of their idols!
“The best trick to pull on any audience is to get the artist as close as possible to them, which the riser does very effectively,” says Levitt. “We do a lot of work with LiteStructures and I’ve known Chris Bridges for a long time,” he continues. “With set manufacture, sometimes we as production people can get caught out by time limitations for the building process, while designs obviously need to be developed fully to make them work. LiteStructures have always worked to accommodate us and their knowledge of manufacture is crucial. Even though we push all our projects to the limit, we always manage to get there.”
http://www.litestructures.co.uk
14th June 2004
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