Access All AreasSerious Stages unveiled its new Stellar concert and festival stage at a series of concerts, presented by Festival Republic, at Crystal Palace Park on 5-7 July featuring performances by The National, Skepta and Bloc Party.
The new Stellar stage, which was designed and manufactured at Serious Stages’ Wells headquarters, was first used for the The National’s headline show on 5 July night, the stage was then reconfigured with a front-of-stage thrust for Skepta’s Big Smoke Festival, before Sunday’s ‘20 years of Bloc Party’ concert.
Stellar is a 20m wide roof, with a 14m trim height, which features 7.5m covered stage side-wings, to give technical teams working room in addition to the rear-stage area for artists equipment change-over. The Crystal Palace roof was a four-bay, 20m deep system, with a branded front extension protecting artists from the rain. The stage incorporates a motor system to raise the roof, removing the need for working at height during installation or de-rig, incorporating pa and screen support goalposts and side wings, which gave an overall 36m frontage, with 17m overall height.
Serious Stages operations manager Abbey Thomas said the concept for the Stellar stage was born out of clients’ feedback, who identified their requirements for a medium-range flat-roof version of the Company’s larger TZ Tower stages: “From initial designs created by our in-house CAD/technical team, components were manufactured in our Wells workshop, before Stellar made its first appearance in London.
“Our investment in this new system, along with the new video towers we produced for Download Festival, underpins our ongoing commitment to help our clients deliver outdoor shows. It was great to see the stage performing so well on this first outing of the summer and it will be next seen at Leeds and Reading Festival.”