STAGING

Staging a revival

Despite the challenges of the 2021 event season, staging suppliers still delivered new and exciting stages at events and festivals across the UK

At Parklife 2019, thousands of festivalgoers crammed into big tops and marquees to watch an eclectic mix of artists perform over two days at Manchester’s Heaton Park. Given the challenges of the last 18 months, it would have been easy for Jon Drape, director of Engine No 4, to deliver all the same elements that loyal Parklife fans know and love.

Instead, Drape, who is just one of the many events professionals responsible for delivering Parklife’s production elements, felt more needed to be done. “We could not deliver the same old Parklife,” he said.

The decision was taken to scrap covered structures, tents, and big tops in favour of COVID-secure outdoor entertainment spaces. Festivalgoers would be exposed to the great British weather, but outdoor spaces allowed for better air flow and ventilation.

Drape continued: “My concern was that Parklife has a young audience, and the festival is often someone’s first ever festival experience. If we had a covered structure, some people, who might not have been in a crowd for a while, or not been in a big tent before, might become anxious. We wanted to make people more comfortable.”

Parklife’s Hangar Stage was just one of the festival’s areas to get a makeover. It contracted Star Live to deliver a new-look Hangar experience.

Simon Broyd, chief commercial officer at Star Live, explained: “We worked with Parklife and their event production company Engine No 4 to develop a new outdoor arena to re-imagine the existing Hangar Stage at Parklife 2021.

“Every venue at Parklife has to deliver maximum impact, so our concept had to look visually stunning but still offer the most advanced performance specification from a technical production point of view.”

Star Live’s re-invention of the Hangar Stage used its UltraTM truss system: It has a footprint of almost 90m x 60m, almost unlimited rigging capacity and can be rapidly built from just two crane positions.

Roger Barrett, technical director at Star Live, said: “Parklife wanted to replace the previous Hangar structure with something that was not enclosed but didn’t want it to be just another stage in a field. We proposed the concept of minimising weather protection to just the essentials whilst surrounding the audience with the familiar footprint of the old Hangar structure – effectively making inside go outside. Creating one end wall of solid LED screen behind the minimalist stage roof and providing the infrastructure to fly copious amounts of lighting and sound above and around the audience worked really well.”

SIGNIFICANT INVESTMENT

Star Live created the UltraTM truss system for the Adele World Tour in 2017. Since then, Star has developed the technology to deliver bigger, more ambitious structures. It’s a popular choice amongst organisers, promoters, and organising committees. Therefore, Star Live has significantly increased its inventory of UltraTM over the last 12 months and will be deploying this technology at multiple sporting, music, and cultural events both in the UK and internationally in 2022.

But Star Live is not the only company to make significant investment in its kit and equipment. NoNonsense Group has developed a Zeus Roof and IPS has launched two stages: a 24m Eurotruss stage, as seen at Green Man this summer, and a 15m mobile trailer stage. The 24m Eurotruss PR15 roof structure can be configured in either 16m, 20m or 24m wide performance options. All options have a 15m deep stage platform with up to 14m internal trim height. Furthermore, the 15m mobile trailer stage is one of the largest mobiles in the UK, with production friendly features, including purpose built rear and side cowsheds.

HARD SEASON

This summer, Star Live has worked on multiple events delivering a range of creative and technical solutions, including Manchester International Festival, Royal Windsor Horse Show, Tramlines, All Points East, Wireless and Creamfields. According to Broyd, it’s been a busy summer. A statement with which Liz Madden, director of NoNonsense Group, concurred.

HANGAR STAGE BY STAR LIVE

“It has been the hardest summer ever,” she said, citing staff shortages, lack of crew, unskilled local labour and poor quality plant hire. “We have turned up on site and not got the plant we have asked for or the quality of the plant has been horrendous. We’ve even had to use a 100-ton crane for a job that needed a 35-ton crane because that’s all they had. And we’ve had lots of last-minute requests.

“Everyone has been on the back foot because they are used to having 12 months to plan an event, but some organisers have only given the green light with weeks to go.”

Despite the challenges, Madden said that seeing ticketholders having a great time has been a highlight. But the season has been “non-stop”.

WORKING TOGETHER

NoNonsense Group has supplied Standon Calling, Parklife, Camp Bestival, Beautiful Days and Hampton Court Palace Festival; the latter two featured NoNonsense’s new Zeus Roof.

“The Zeus Roof went out incognito in 2019,” explained Madden. “It was installed at Houghton Festival, but the festival was cancelled because of extremely high winds, so the roof never really got its first proper outing.”

Beautiful Days and Hampton Court Palace Festival both used the Zeus Roof, as did Parklife.

Madden continued: “We have worked at Parklife for some time, supplying the festival’s Temple stage. This year, the Temple stage featured a big performance from Pendulum, so we had to swop out our 20m Apollo Roof for our 20m Zeus Roof to take the extra weight loading.”

The Zeus Roof is lightweight yet a 20m wide roof can take 10 tonne UDL, and a 24m stage can take eight tonne UDL. The roof can also go to 30 metres. It’s proving popular with organisers that want choice and flexibility.

“It’s been a big success,” commented Madden. “This summer, we have created lots of great memories thanks to amazing crew, lovely suppliers and fabulous clients and we couldn’t have done it without them.”

IPS AT GREEN MAN