Mind-blowing stage sculptures that fuse music and technology

These are sequences from a play called
the Lehman Trilogy,

which traces the origins
of Western capitalism

in three hours

with three actors and a piano.

And my role was to create a stage design

to write a visual language for this work.

The play describes Atlantic crossings,

Alabama cotton fields,

New York skylines,

and we framed the whole thing
within this single revolving cube,

a kind of kinetic cinema
through the centuries.

It's like a musical instrument

played by three performers,

and as they step their way
around and through

the lives of the Lehman brothers,

we, the audience,

begin to connect with
the simple, human origins

at the root of the complex
global financial systems

that we're all still in thrall to today.

I used to play musical instruments
myself when I was younger.

My favorite was the violin.

It was this intimate transfer of energy.

You held this organic sculpture
up to your heart,

and you poured the energy
of your whole body

into this little piece of wood,
and heard it translated into music.

And I was never particularly
good at the violin,

but I used to sit at the back
of the second violin section

in the Hastings Youth Orchestra

scratching away.

We were all scratching,

and marveling at this symphonic sound
that we were making

that was so much
more beautiful and powerful

than anything we would ever
have managed on our own.

And now, as I create
large scale performances,

I am always working with teams

that are at least the size
of a symphony orchestra,

and whether we are creating

these revolving giant
chess piece time tunnels

for an opera by Richard Wagner,

or shark tanks and mountains
for Kanye West,

we're always seeking to create
the most articulate sculpture,

the most poetic instrument
of communication to an audience.

When I say poetic,

I just mean language
at its most condensed,

like a song lyric,

a poetic puzzle
to be unlocked and unpacked.

And when we were preparing
to design Beyonce's "Formation" tour,

we looked at all the lyrics

and we came across this poem
that Beyonce wrote.

"I saw a TV preacher when I was scared
at four or five about bad dreams

who promised he'd say a prayer
if I put my hand to the TV.

"That's the first time I remember prayer
as electric current running through me."

And this TV that transmitted prayer
to Beyonce as a child

became this monolithic revolving sculpture

that broadcast Beyonce
to the back of the stadium.

And the stadium is a mass congregation.

It's a temporary population
of a hundred thousand people

who have all come there to sing along
with every word together,

but they've also come there
each seeking one-to-one intimacy

with the performer.

And we, as we conceive the show,
we have to provide intimacy

on a grand scale.

It usually starts with sketches.

I was drawing this 60-foot-high revolving
broadcast-quality portrait of the artist,

and then I tore
the piece of paper in half.

I split the mask

to try to access the human
underneath it all.

And it's one thing to do sketches,
but of course translating from a sketch

into a tourable revolving
six-story building

took some exceptional engineers
working around the clock for three months

until finally we arrived in Miami

and opened the show in April 2016.

(Music: Beyonce's "Formation")

(Applause)

Thank you.

I call my work stage sculpture,

but of course what's really being sculpted

is the experience of the audience,

and as directors and designers,

we have to take responsibility

for every minute that
the audience spend with us.

We're a bit like pilots

navigating a flight path

for a hundred thousand passengers,

and in the case of
the Canadian artist The Weeknd,

we translated this flight path literally

into an origami paper folding airplane

that took off over the heads
of the audience,

broke apart in mid-flight, complications,

and then rose out of the ashes restored

at the end of the show,

and like any flight,

the most delicate part is the liftoff,

the beginning,

because when you design a pop concert,

the prime material
that you're working with

is something that doesn't take trucks

or crew to transport it.

It doesn't cost anything,

and yet it fills every atom of air
in the arena before the show starts.

It's the audience's anticipation.