MadonnaTribe meets Bruce Rodgers
Next week we will be adding a brand new interview to our collection. After working on it for a while we are now proud to present an exclusive interview to Bruce Rodgers from Tribe Inc, the creator and designer of the Drowned World Tour stage, who will discuss with us his work with Madonna on that tour and much more.
The first of a two part interview will premiere as part of the new “issue” of our online magazine, the Idol.
Last time, with the winter issue of Idol, we brought you the “re-Invention tour scrapbook“, this time we will take you behind the scenes into the making of almost all Madonna‘s tour with a collection of exclusive interviews, some of them premiering on Tribe for the first time. We will also leave this summer issue Idol “open”, just like we did with the previous one, to keep it fresh as new content will be added over the next few months.
And now here’s a preview from our interview with Bruce Rodgers of Tribe, inc.:
MadonnaTribe: “Living La Vida Loca World Tour” was the show that impressed Madonna so much to make her ask you to be in charge of the stage design for her upcoming world tour. But it was also a chance for you to work with some familiar faces that have been working with her for years.
Bruce Rodgers: I was asked by Jamie King, who was the choreographer behind Ricky Martin’s big Grammy performance, to come up with an idea for Ricky’s tour.
Everyone knew this production was going to be big and fun and I was excited to pitch my concepts.
When Jamie called I was in Washington D.C. working on “Brave New World” with the Nightline production team.
I worked thru the night in my hotel room sketching while listening to Ricky’s music on my headphones.
My first inspiration was a photograph of Ricky’s face in Rolling stone magazine that I bought in a local grocery store.
I thought it would be fun to use the proportions of his face as the basis for the set.
As it turned out in the pitch Ricky understood and loved the concept of the set being based on his face. He liked the idea that lighting, effects, dancers etc, would be crawling all around his head and knew it would be fun.
MadonnaTribe: The Drowned World Tour was also the first Madonna tour to be entirely performed in arenas, what was the impact on the design, of having no curtain and no actual separation between the stage and the audience, and people sitting 270° around?
Bruce Rodgers: Great question! For me the experience in an arena, in 270 or 360-degree sightlines, is the most intimate.
Feeling the raked audience almost wrap around a 270 set is really exciting to the audience because you can see people such as yourself having the experience of their lives. That feeling is contagious and religious!
Although I used a wrap around show curtain on Ricky’s 270° design I didn’t need one for “Drowned World”. I suggested the audience walk in with the arena dark and with the “space ship/ lighting rig” down on the stage deck ready to lift off and up during the opening number.
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