Stadium pop and giant robots: graphic analysis of the stage design of Take That’s Progress Live
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.20868/ardin.2025.14.5430Keywords:
ephemeral architecture, concert, scenography, Es Devllin, graphic reconstitutionAbstract
In 2011 Take That broke attendance and box office records with their Progress Live tour. The stage design was the work of Es Devlin, who designed a main stage dominated by a 30-meter-high half-human body sculpture known as “Big Man” and a 21-meter-high mechanical robot that would stand up and open its arms, which she called “Other Man”. Despite the popularity of the tour, there are no publicly available plans or technical documentation of the scenography used. This article vindicates the consideration of scenographies as an architectural type in itself, and its main objective and fundamental contribution consists of a complete graphic reconstitution of Devlin’s project, unpublished and self-made material, which is used as support for a series of analytical diagrams related to its operation in the service of a stadium concert.
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