INTERVIEW: Dirk De Decker Below: U2’s Claw stage under construction; Stageco’s Hedwig De Meyer and Dirk De Decker at PLASA 2011; Muse’s bespoke stage build in Manchester, 2009.
company. For each venue on the demanding tour, Stageco built its 30 metre high, 190 tonne steel superstructure in just over four days. This build is put into perspective when you consider that the lifting process alone required 16 trucks of equipment. For Muse’s Resistance tour, which spent
almost two years on the road, the complexity of the stage design was made more complicated by the sheer scale of the set. Stageco produced the steel sub structure of the stage, and Brilliant Stages fabricated the new one. “When I received the drawings over e-mail, I think I wrote back that they were on to something good and I liked it!” De Decker laughed. “It’s a very unbalanced structure because it’s a lot higher and heavier in the central overhang than at the sides. Most of the time we try to reduce the weight in the overhang in the cantilever, but here the further the cantilever goes up, the more it is loaded, so it’s the other way round.” Due to the need to angle the steel truss into
a forced perspective, it meant that the Stageco crew had to adopt a construction technique never used before in the build of any of its stages. Explained De Decker: “We had a tower
with a hydraulic cylinder in it that was used as a temporary support for the cantilever so we could adjust the position of the cantilever while
76 • TPi NOVEMBER 2011
we were building it and de-rigging it, to reduce the stress on the joins. It’s nothing new, you see it a lot in construction and bridge building, but it’s the first time I’ve seen it in a Stageco structure.” Brilliant Stages worked in conjunction with
De Decker and Koen Peters of Stageco to marry together the sub-structure and adorning set. The overall stadium set consists of a 62 metre long video canopy, suspended ceiling grid and off-stage rear fascias, and a tracking B-stage with inset revolving scissor lift. More recently, it was Take That’s Progress
Live tour, which Stageco completed, using 14 trucks to transport 300 tonnes of steel. Said De Decker: “Usually, it takes a year for a big bespoke stage to be finalised, but Take That was an unusual case; it took seven months from scratch to build the stage for about 40 shows.” The bespoke stage was created for shows across the UK and Europe between May 27 and July 29 this year. De Decker planned the custom built stage
in consultation with the Progress Live tour’s Production Manager Chris Vaughan, Show Designer Es Devlin and Technical Designer Malcolm Birkett. The structure carried extensive technology,
production and scenic elements that included a giant 60ft mechanical robot called Om and a
giant ‘Big Man’ who appeared to have his arms around the entire performance area, framed the main stage system. For this, a 28 metre high central tower to carry the ‘Big Man’s’ head and two side towers for his hands as well as PA and video systems were created. To hold the impressive curved bridge that
weighed in at 20 tonnes, Stageco’s engineers incorporated 5 metre long custom built headers into the stage, which along with the side towers also supported further weight from video screens, lighting, performers and water effects within the show. Measurement and marking out of the stage
foundations at each venue was critical to the build success, needing to be accurate to the millimetre to ensure the coming together of the moving scenic parts. Since August this year, Stageco has been
supplying its Super Roof for the outdoor events on George Michael’s Symphonica tour throughout Europe; including the singer’s first ever gig in Croatia to 12,000 fans. The future for De Decker is a constant
adventure into new challenges, bespoke stages and jaw-dropping construction. For Stageco as a whole, it’s just as the company ethos states: If you can imagine it, we can build it. TPi
www.stageco.com
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