Litestructures Live Supply ‘Big Top’ for Take That's Circus 08/07/09

One of the biggest Stage Set of the year certainly belongs to the latest Take That ‘Circus’ tour and Litestructures Live (LS Live) are pleased to have supplied one of the integral features of the show.

Working in conjunction with set manufacturer Brilliant Stages and from a concept designed by Es Devlin, LS Live was asked to manufacture a custom ‘Big Top’ trussing structure measuring 6m high with a 15m diameter circle. The all custom structure was a very challenging build and had to be able to rotate 90 degrees up making a total height of 30m when lifted. The structure includes 9 curved truss legs attached to a main truss ring. The rear of the structure is fastened to steel hinges and hydrolic catch arms allowing it to lift up.

It took the LS Live team 6 weeks from design to completion; which is a very short timeframe considering the scale of the structure. Thanks to the onsite LS Live Studio, all the last minute tests were possible and a pre-build made sure it all fitted together before the first show which kicked off in Cardiff on 17th June.

Tony Bowern, project manager for Brilliant Stage comments: "Given the size of the project and the time constraint to complete all of the fabrication we at Brilliant Stages, once designed and drawn, turned to Litestructures to produce the 'Big Top' framework. We had no second thoughts on using them due to their experience and reputation in building custom aluminium truss fabrications. The other great advantage was the fact that using their rehearsal facility they could assemble and test rig the whole system before delivering to rehearsals in Cardington Hangers. The end result proved our confidence in using the Litestuctures production team, this allowed us to complete the rest of the set comfortably on time. Good job well done."