CMU School of Drama


Wednesday, November 09, 2011

Trizart Alliance Provides a Look Back at the Complexities of Staging U2's 360 Tour

PLSNIn the fall of 2009 Trizart Alliance, arena and theatre consultant, was presented with an immense challenge by the General Manager of Evenko, Jacques Aubé, and Live Nation Global Touring’s CEO Arthur Fogel: Find an alternative to the inoperable Olympic Stadium for a one night U2 performance in Montréal, Canada in July 2010. Given the scale of the show and the number of seats involved, Pierre Lemieux of Trizart Alliance spontaneously suggested that they build a temporary stadium, from the ground up, expressly for the event. This marked the beginning of a challenging journey which would lead to the most important "paying" show in Canada, attracting over 162,000 spectators.

3 comments:

Meg DC said...

First off, anyone who has not seen the Claw should go to youtube right now. There are a good videos of load, strike, and run.


Projects like this are what make me excited and simultaneously terrified to be in the entertainment industry. It is one this to put up a large tour in an arena or even putting up large tents like Cirque, but this is a monster of a project. For a race track to become an arena of that size for just a weekend must have cost a pretty penny (which people were willing to spend, apparently, because the concert sold in two days). Hopefully this will lead the way for more creative uses of spaces in the future (although not this scale right away perhaps) and artists will be able to reach more people in more places with more amazing feats.

Robert said...

I did not know that they built a temporary stadium to test out the U2 stage and system. I am sure that they ran into a lot of problems with the first time they put the show together with things not lining up or I need to put that there. More and more that I hear about the set and how it worked and was made, makes me think this was not a show like it was it the past. When you think about all of the things that U2 have had their hand it there was a lot of things which include a show on Broadway and people never think of that show as one that will make it but it may be the one that re defines the way in which they work for the rest of time.

Jennifer said...

This project sounds massive and while these types of projects are exciting to work on, I don't know if bigger is always better. At some point bigger is just excessive and I don't know if the money is really worth it. Does it make the music any better? Not really...