Australian singer-songwriter Dean Lewis always dreamt of being a prolific songwriter. Today, his emotive tunes can be heard globally with an astounding 14 billion streams.
Currently touring the globe on ‘The Epilogue World Tour’, Dean Lewis’s music has received multiple platinum and gold certifications worldwide. He has performed at more than 400 shows and festivals worldwide, cementing his position as a leading figure in the music industry.
Lewis’s music resonates with listeners for its introspective exploration of love, heartbreak, and self-discovery. This results in an unspoken connection between Lewis and his audience rarely witnessed at a concert. He is vulnerable and emotionally raw, openly sharing his experiences and forming a connection with the healing power of music.
Few arena shows achieve such intimacy as a Dean Lewis concert. Above the stage hangs a giant, crumpled sheet of paper covered with scribbled words, suggesting that we are about to step into his world and witness a side of him that only a few had seen. This masterfully orchestrated entrance set the stage for what was to come.
Production design and lighting design are by Sooner Routhier and Ian Haslauer, respectively, of The Playground, a collaborative environment for independent designers to create together under an umbrella that allows for the sharing of resources.
The Playground functions much like a co-op. Two or three designers lead each project. They all share resources, expenses, and profit on the projects. It allows them all to collaborate in a healthy environment. Troubleshooting and creative challenges are all shared. Routhier explains that they are all stronger and able to take more on because they are involved in the projects together.
“Dean’s management contacted us via our website – we love it when that happens!” said Routhier. “We had a preliminary call with management to ensure that schedules and scope aligned. We followed up with a call with Dean, and it seemed to be the perfect fit.”
Routhier’s design process for a new production begins with a chat with the artist to understand the creative space they’re currently living in. She likes to ask what they’ve been inspired by to create the latest music, tour announcements, socials, etc. Sometimes, she asks pointed questions. Sometimes, she lets them talk. It’s a very different process from one artist to the next.
“We then begin researching, playing with reference images, building our reference images in AI, and creating mood boards. Once we’ve developed the overarching idea, we draw in Vectorworks. I must draw in 3D space with a bounding box to keep within size limitations. It’s part of my process. I have to be able to revolve around a model. Hand sketching can sometimes work for me, but drawing in Vectorworks is the best creation method as it places the rig directly in the correct size venue.”
Dean described to Routhier how important his journal writing was to his process. They chatted about the journal, the look of the simple blue lined paper and his handwriting, and how important it is to his fans when he posts them on socials.
“Dean is inspired by nature and landscapes, mountains, trees, etc,” added Routhier. “We asked if he wanted any particular elements in the show, but he was pretty open to us interpreting his process into a stage design.”
Initially, it felt like quite an abstract concept to Routhier. Trying to mimic his journaling on a stage was challenging to wrap their heads around. Routhier started thinking about what it’s like to write on paper, its tactile feel, how it looks with its grid of lines, how it crumples, and so on.
“We also brainstormed the mountain idea to incorporate his love of landscapes,” she said. “After playing with some lined paper, I realized the best approach was to place him under a crumpled piece of paper. Crumpled paper can look quite like a rock! So, we had a winning concept that incorporated his love of journaling and landscape.”
Every tour design comes with budget restraints, even the massive stadium shows. Fortunately, the crumpled paper mountain was very cost-effective, and it breaks down into four Pelican cases. So it’s also pretty eco-friendly and space-saving.
The paper mountain is divided into four pieces and made of window screen and fabric, so it can flex and fit virtually anywhere. From above, it looks like a mountain and underneath is a high-resolution print of Dean’s words on paper. Sew What in LA constructed the paper mountain from printed fabric sewn to the window screen. It has a grid of hanging points throughout, so it can be rigged in whichever way is most straightforward and makes the most sense from venue to venue.
“There was talk of adding video quite a few times,” remarked Routhier. “I was happy with a low landscape wall to give our mountain a horizon, but it was never paramount to the design. The back and forth of adding or not adding video to the kit was a bit challenging. I thought the paper mountain could carry the stage design independently, so I was happy we had landed on the current design.”
Lighting
Routhier designed the initial plot and then handed the reins to Ian Haslauer to take it over and adjust it to his liking.
“Once the production design was sorted, Ian took it and ran with it,” explained Routhier. “My most significant request was to make sure we had many of the same types of fixtures. I’m a big fan of having all Profiles instead of breaking up the beams with half Washes and half Profiles. The rig looks cleaner when the key on the lighting plot has a minimum amount of fixtures. Ian worked closely with Michael ‘Simmo’ Simpson, Production Manager, to determine the different fixtures between certain shows. There was a lot of back and forth regarding gear that I wasn’t a part of.”
Haslauer met Routhier many years ago on the Australian Bee Gees project. At the time, Routhier was touring with Bon Jovi, and Haslauer was working in a small theatre in Chicago, in the basement of the Ritz-Carlton. It held two or three hundred people, and the vendor hired Haslauer as the board operator.
“We’ve been working together ever since on projects such as The Lumineers, Noah Kahan, Matchbox 20, and Pentatonix,” Haslauer commented. “I always look forward to projects with Routhier and Playground. I love that she’s very collaborative and unafraid to ask people for their ideas on a project. That’s why I love working with her.”
Routhier and Haslauer have collaborated on several very scenic shows; however, Haslauer admits that this one was difficult to pre-vis even in Depence, as he wasn’t sure how transparent the scenic piece would be. Thankfully, it was built as designed, and he had fun playing with it in rehearsals, shooting beams through it and lighting different sides of it to get unique looks.
Seven days of rehearsals were held at Stage 2, Disney Studios Australia in Sydney. Haslauer’s favourite part was that they had 24-hour access, so they could stay as long as they wanted.
“Some of those were band rehearsal days, but fortunately, we were there for a decent amount of time,” added Haslauer. “This gave us enough time to ensure the scenic was lit properly.”
Although they were running the show twice a day in rehearsals, having never worked for the artist before, it was difficult for Hauslauer to get a feel for what the audience’s reaction was going to be. Thankfully, Lighting Director Bowen Moss was able to guide him in the right direction and provide valuable advice as he was also the Lighting Director on Dean’s last tour in the USA.
“However, it was still great to finally do that first show with the new production, hone in on specific moments in the show, and then work to improve how they look further,” Hauslauer said.
Haslauer added that Lewis has such a significant online presence, so they wanted to ensure the show would look good on social media platforms such as Instagram and TikTok. They spent a lot of time ensuring the key light was the right colour temperature and the audience was properly lit when Dean had moments in the crowd.
“Both Lewis and Musical Director Alex Bennison were able to sit with us at FOH in rehearsals and make comments, which was great,” Haslauer revealed. ”I was grateful that they both made the time available to do that, and it is one of my favourite parts of the creative process.”
The first gig was essentially a warm-up show in Newcastle’s historic Civic Theatre, where the design needed to be smaller, but it still made sense in the space and proved that the design could transfer well into various venues.
The tour began as Australia’s frantic summer touring season kicked in, and securing enough gear in every city can be challenging. Melbourne-based MPH Australia came to the party by meeting Routhier and Haslauer’s requirements.
It’s a simple design that is exceptionally well executed. A rear truss and a front truss subtly wrapped the stage, while a smaller mid truss extended fingers over the crumpled note. A comprehensive floor package adds to that. The rig comprised 58 x ACME Pixel Line IP, 37 x Ayrton Eurus S, 23 x Chauvet Professional Color Strike M and 10 s Martin MAC Aura XIP. The lighting was designed so fixtures could easily be swapped out as the tour travels the globe and the available gear changes.
The Color Strike M fixtures light the set from the top and bottom of the stage, and the Pixel Lines line the two main trusses.
Haslauer comments that the Color Strike M fixtures replaced the GLP JDC-1 strobes originally specified.
”The nice thing about the Strike M is that you can use it outdoors without worrying about it getting wet,” he added. The flexibility of being able to tilt them out to the audience at specific points in the show and then having them tilt right back down to the Canopy was great.”
The ACME Pixel Lines were responsible for lighting the soft goods and the audience. The ability to pop the frost filter in and out on that light with a push of a button on the console is tremendous, according to Hauslauer.
As for the Ayrton Eurus, they happened to be the moving head Profile that MPH had available, and Hauslauer wasn’t sure if he had used them before, but he very quickly grew to love them. Sixteen hung from the back truss, fourteen from the front truss, and seven placed on the upstage floor.
Four Robe Robospots were used to keep Dean’s key light consistent. Two were doubled up on one controller, and the other two were used for solo moments from different artists on the stage.
The ten Martin MAC Aura XIP are on the stage floor, five per side, for side light, which helped to shape the band and separate Dean from the upstage members with contrasting colours.
The Dean Lewis show was the fourth show Haslauer has programmed in MA3 mode, adding that his workflow is constantly evolving and that he is excited to see the improvements in the software over the next couple of years.
“The first show I programmed in MA3 resulted in some tears,” he admitted. “I think because I was in MA2 land for ten years, I just knew how to do everything on the console, so it was hard to accept that I didn’t know how to do everything on MA3. Even now, eight months into it, there are still things I don’t know how to do. I’ve become a lot closer to certain co-workers who are also using MA3 because we have a bit of a group chat that’s going back and forth, like, oh, we saw this today, and you know, trying to help them make it better too, because a lot of the bugs that people find, other people wouldn’t see. We need to be ahead of sharing that information, or those bugs will never get fixed.”
Haslauer has enjoyed the transition to MA3 and is excited for more people to do it this year.
“One of my favourite parts about the MA3 Software is the ability to change the phase of the effects on the X, Y, and Z axis,” he said. “I had a previous show where there was a back wall of 80 x GLP X4 bars, and you could create bitmap-looking effects just by adjusting the phase on the X and Y axis at the same time, which was a thing that you couldn’t do in MA2. The multi-instance fixtures and the cloning GUI are getting more manageable, and Bowen Moss is now a wizz, as he has had to clone into a new rig several times. It takes some time to get your head around the grid selection and the concept of phasers, but once you do, a light bulb goes off. It’s the way forward, and I’m excited to learn more about it. Every software update that comes out is more and more exciting.”
Haslauer remarks that MPH Australia has been great, adding that they all worked incredibly hard on the tour. Chantelle Young, Jeff Pavey, Sam Balarezo and Hannah Grech made an excellent team. Jason Bond was also on board as the tour rigger, and Hauslauer says he was the most patient rigger he knows.
“Everybody seems to be on the same page, which is excellent,” Haslauer added. “The lighting team worked hard and always did so with a smile. I appreciate all their hard work.”
Images: Tim Lambert
Note the show photos were taken in Melbourne.
This article originally appeared in the January issue of Lighting & Sound International magazine.
