One Direction - Where We Are Tour '14-'15

2014 sees 1D achieve stadium status with their current Where We Are world tour whose personnel includes many familiar faces. Production manager Wob Roberts has worked with Stageco more than any other staging company, on tours with Robbie Williams and Genesis as well as numerous festivals across Europe. His reasons for returning to Stageco for Where We Are speak volumes about the depth of skill and experience offered by the Belgian company.           "the schedule for this tour is extremely tight and the only company I could trust to meet the challenge whilst providing three versions of exactly the right stage was Stageco.          “When you are working at this level of touring with what is currently the biggest band in the world, it’s very hard to trust an unknown solution to what is essentially the foundation of your show. It’s not always about price and Stageco are not the cheapest in the world but when they take on a job, it’s a done deal.”          The main roof is 25m wide by 20m deep and the video/PA wing each side is 14m, giving an overall span of 53m. Then there is the B-stage runway, the bulk of which consists of Stageco elements. Despite specifying a festival roof, the designers wanted to make the show look as unlike a festival scenario as possible, using large fascias for the video screens that visually bring the stage forward into the audience from underneath the roof. By doing this, however, the weight loading into the cantilever was increased to the extent that Stageco’s standard 4-Tower roof became a 5-Tower. Due to the weight issue and the way the video had to be rigged, the width of the roof was reduced. So there is an extra portal at the front that deals with the extra stress. Steel is what it is but it’s the people behind it that make it work and a lot of what Stageco does is about problem solving – from the designers in the office to the guy on the road. Each system is packed into 12 trucks, accompanied by nine crew including working drivers. With a build schedule of two and a half days, and a de-rig lasting just under a day, each system can theoretically service a show every seven days. Fortunately, the inclusion of many multiple shows, as happened at Wembley, Manchester and Dublin, helps reduce the traffic.       Show photography © Calvin Aurand