Multi Grammy-winner Shania Twain is currently travelling the world with her Queen of Me tour. Having finished up in the U.S., Twain is currently over in the UK and Ireland before wrapping up in Canada later this fall. This marks Twain’s first tour in nearly five years and follows the release of her album of the same name—her first record since 2017 and the debut of her new label partner, Republic Nashville. From residency to tour to the album, there is no doubt that Twain’s Queen of Me reign has been successfully. PLSN caught up with Lighting Designer André Petrus to talk about the lighting design for this tour and how it supports Twain’s music and performances. Petrus, who again collaborated on this tour design with Production Designer Cory FitzGerald, has been working with Twain since 2015 programming for her tours and lighting Twain’s Las Vegas residency show.
“The show is themed around Shania’s new album, which also features a handful of her classic hits,” says Petrus. “The song, “Waking Up Dreaming” is the opener and best describes the theme of the show. It’s a journey through space on a rocket ship which crashes into Twain Town. The show is packed with 3D animations, including an LED floor that really gives every seat a good perspective. Shania creative directs her own shows and wanted the set to be made up of LED so it can consistently morph into different scenes. She wanted to feel immersed in the content, so we carry an LED floor and LED I-Mag screens; the entire show feels totally enveloping.”
From a production aspect, Petrus describes the tour as “a straightforward pop show. It’s designed to also be a bit flexible because they go from arenas, to amphitheaters, and they’ve also done a stadium on this tour. So, if anything, from a production aspect it’s scalable. I think that’s the biggest thing to take away from the design is the fact that it’s scalable and you can get it into multiple different places without sacrificing a lot of the big looks.” For instance, when the tour hit the Nashville stadium, Geodis Park, home of Nashville Soccer Club, instead of the 270° wrap-around arena approach, the stadium show was mounted on a K2 roof structure with side wings. “We had more LED in the arena show because it’s actually in the round,” explains Petrus, “whereas for the stadium show it was more of a traditional stage set-up. We expanded the lighting on the wings to make the show wider, added more audience lighting, and added some keylight towers behind FOH.”
Photo by Keith Griner
Design
FitzGerald, Partner and Creative Director at Silent House in Burbank, was Creative Producer/Production Designer for this tour, conceiving the overall production design and devising the screen configuration and truss layout. The placement of screens included a main upstage screen, large LED facia, LED floor, and a header that borders stage right and left and the downstage. Once the screens were confirmed then it was time to fit in the lighting with a giant box truss that runs upstage to downstage and a downstage truss that floats over the header. “Cory did the production design, and then he handed me the canvas,” says Petrus, who first worked with FitzGerald on Twain’s residency in Las Vegas back in 2019. As to merging his lighting design in with FitzGerald’s production design, he notes, “Cory is awesome to work with and is super chill. The thing I love about Cory is he just lets me be creative and do my thing. This is the second big project we worked on together, and both were great. He answers all the logistical questions when it comes to something on the stage or something technical speaking about it with Shania. Overall though, he just hands me the canvas, saying ‘there you go. I’ll let you know if anything pops up’. Cory has had a lot of experience doing stadium and arena shows on this level. That’s his wheelhouse and it is great that he shares that experience but trust me to run with things.”
Once they got into rehearsals Petrus worked closely with Twain on the lighting and also ended up programming all the video as well. Petrus didn’t really mean to take on so much in the beginning. When the Twain camp reached out to him, the plan was to make a touring version of the Las Vegas residency production. That plan would quickly go out the window and a completely new show was created during the rehearsal process. “It was new everything,” states Petrus. “She was extremely hands-on and brought a lot of ideas to the show during rehearsals, we sat together creating things. As I handled her lighting and visuals, we talked a lot about color temperature, we talk about intensity, we talk about everything. She sat next to me for six days straight. And quite honestly, she spent just as much time on site as I did. I’d come in at 10 a.m. and guess what? She was already there. And then she’d stay up and sit next to me until 2:30 in the morning working on something. Of course, I’d stay after a little bit to clean up some things, but when I came in the next day she was there. And she had to perform.
As noted, the production design is heavy in video so Petrus had to work the lighting in around it. “Shania really likes a digital content feel, so she wanted to be immersed in the content,” explains Petrus. “We also chose to carry LED I-Mag screens, so the I-Mag was an extension of the stage design and concept. That was the main feeling. Then we sprinkled in lighting where we could; we have a lot of overhead lights that go right over the performance area with seven fingers of truss that are packed full of lights. Then surrounding the upstage wall, there’s ladders that encompass the whole design and just frame it out. She performs a lot of her songs on the LED floor, so she is literally immersed in the content completely. Around that LED floor, we have floor lights as well that just line everything, box things in.”
Photo by Keith Griner
Lighting
Petrus has been lighting Shania since 2015 and has a great handle on what works well to support her music and the vision she sees for the show. “For Shania’s shows, every song always needs to feel big, in my opinion,” Petrus says. “Her music is big. When you hear it, it rocks. It’s full on, so all the looks just need to be impactful. For me everything needs to look good, but if I take a picture at any point, it needs to look full. It needs to look big, but also, it’s about the musicality. I am really into the music, so I follow the music when it comes to the looks and the feel. If the songs are different, then it’s going to look different—whether it’s the colors, the feel of the music, and the mood, but really, I let the musicality drive what it’s going to be.”
As a designer, Petrus likes to pick fewer fixture types but then have a lot of that type of fixture. “So, if I have one type of fixture, I’ll have 100 of those lights, and all those 100 lights are probably going to be doing that same type of thing. I don’t like to break up the rig. That’s how I get a lot of the big looks. Instead of having 10 or 15 different fixture types, I’d rather have four or five, but have a lot of each of those fixture types, each one of those fixture types usually is accenting something within that song. When you do that, it just gets you great big looks, but every song feels different because you’re following the music.”
Key Equipment Choices
For Petrus, a lot of the equipment choices came down to availability. He worked with Josh Wagner, the Upstaging Project Manager, the lighting vendor for the tour, to source his rig. “As you know, everything comes down to budgets and what the vendors have and what they can do for the right price,” says Petrus. “Upstaging is always great when it comes to lighting. I’ve done a handful of shows with them, and they’ve always been great with their support and their crews.” For this tour, Petrus explains, “We ended up getting a bunch of the ACME Lyras, which was a swap from another fixture that we had we wanted, but the Lyras worked out well. We had over 100 of those, the majority of them being over the stage and performance areas. Then we also had two ladders on either side with them. We also had Ayrton Dominos on the downstage truss, and that was really to box in and really help give the entire picture a frame. This truss sat above our LED video header to do a bunch of aerial looks above the screen. We also had another six Dominos on the floor as shin kickers. We really needed something that had a lot of punch, and those Domino fixtures definitely did that. They are by far the brightest hard edge we carry, and the optics are phenomenal. With such an LED video intensive show, we chose the Dominos for its ability to cut through the presence of so many screens.”
Another key gear choice was a range of GLP products in the rig. “We had a lot of the JDC Line fixtures—500s and 1000s, and those are great,” comments Petrus, “as we really got a lot of good looks out of those. With the the pixel control that you have over those GLP fixtures you can really get almost endless looks, to be honest. The JDC Lines are some of my favorite fixtures, high quality and bright. It’s just such a versatile fixture. We have the JDC Line 500s outlining the ladders on either side of the upstage video wall and the JDC Line 1000s underneath the LED wall. Again, since the show is so video driven, the lighting as I said is designed to accent, outline, and box in a lot of the video.”
For some shows, like the stadium show in Nashville, Petrus added GLP FR10 Bars to line the central LED stage performance floor and entire outside of the stage. This brought attention to the performance area. “We really needed a linear fixture that was bright as we need something that can really punch through the video. Between the JDC Lines and FR10s, that really did the job for us. I had been using the X4 Bar 20s and replaced those with 60 of the more powerful FR10 Bars.” The impression FR10 Bar gives him a big step up in power. “I would say it’s four times as bright [as the X4 Bar 20] but is easily twice the size. Also, the FR10 Bar gives you the individual zoom which is great and a whole other dynamic to the light. For instance, you can get cool effects, carving through the atmosphere haze, to get a completely different feel.”
Petrus programmed his own show on a grandMA3, opting as always for a high Multipix mode with the GLP units to give him full individual pixel control. “I create a lot of custom dimming curve presets, to give each light individuality.” The JDC1s were scattered in the overhead—distributed on fingers from upstage to downstage, five on each stick of truss—and this helped create the roof. “The cool thing about this design is that the show looks completely different depending on where you’re sitting,” he says. “As a programmer, what you get out of the entire JDC series is the smooth dimming curves, while the color shifting is minimal, and it reacts exactly to what you tell it to do.” Having programmed the show, Petrus passed over the reins to Pete Smith to direct the show on the road.
Video
Since Petrus also had control of the video for the Queen of Me tour, he programmed it in with his lighting. Tying in video control with lighting made the most sense for this show. They used the 5mm LED product, ROE Visual CB5 in an air frame, with the floor comprised of 3.9mm product from Yes Tech. The content was fed from disguise servers, with all supplied by the video vendor for the tour Fuse Technical Group. The video content was overseen by FitzGerald working with Twain and her team, then created by Burbank, CA-based BLINK Inc. “We used disguise servers to push everything and that 5mm LED screen looks great,” says Petrus, “and we used Brompton [Technology] processors so we were able to control all the brightness directly from the console. This kept all the colors true as we changed levels. We weren’t making any adjustments on the layers in the server, but in the processors, which was really nice. Adam Fontana from Dark Matter [Technologies] helped with programming the servers. I always like working with Dark Matter; they were very helpful getting the video spec’ed out and the servers up and running. If I needed anything, they were literally right there fixing things as I needed them.” Petrus also enjoyed working with Fuse, which he described as “great. Anything I need, they got it to me. That’s also what’s awesome about using a company that can provide anything, is you ask for it and it’s there. They also supplied a great crew for this tour.”
Petrus continues to enjoy his collaboration with Shania Twain and her team, but notes that, “I after this tour, I have even more respect for Shania. It is amazing just how much she puts into it, how much she cares. She’s one of the hardest workers I know. She was there in rehearsal with us early in the morning right through into the early hours of the next morning, and we rehearsed every single number. She came out and watched every single number. She’s very hands-on and really hard working. I have a lot of respect for her and for the attention she gives to every aspect, from the choreography to the lighting design to the video. And the tour itself is no joke, the routing is a show every other day for months. She’s out there really working. It is great to work with her and to be part of her show.”
Photo by Keith Griner
VENDOR VIEW
UPSTAGING
Josh Wagner
“We love making Cory’s [FitzGerald] designs come to life. It’s always fun discussing his ideas and the ways to make them happen. André [Petrus] knows exactly how he wants to use the design and shares his goals with us to make sure we provide them with what they need. Both Cory and André are a real pleasure to work with.
It’s always a great experience working with PM Denny Rich. He comes to the table with a lot of ideas about how to make the show work logistically. He’s really easy to communicate with, which is key to achieving the best results. The rest of his camp are equally knowledgeable and easy to work with. All around this was a great tour to work on.”
As to why Upstaging was the right vendor for this tour: “I think our previous history with Shania Twain, Cory, Denny [Rich], and Joel [Eriksson] gives us good insight into their expectations. Knowing what they wanted made it easy to provide the service they needed. This tour uses a lot of gear in a tight space. We were able to come up with ideas that enabled all departments to work together and build the show with minimal day to day headaches.”
FUSE TECHNICAL GROUP
Patrick Eaton
“They’re [Cory FitzGerald and André Petrus] a pair of some of the best to work with in this industry. They pose thoughtful questions and challenges for us to sort through as a team. Their collaborative work style meant that any time that something needed to be addressed, it was done in a consistent and thoughtful manner that always had the artist’s best interest in mind.
One of the most innovative things this year was that this was our first [disguise media server] GX3 tour that we’ve deployed, and the first tour we implemented the 12G SFP’s with their IP VFC Cards. This allowed us to natively route 12G signals to LED processors, dramatically reducing the need for format conversion infrastructure.”
As to why Fuse Technical Group was the right vendor for this tour: “We strive to work as a team and collaborate amongst the different departments to ensure a successful launch of any show we do. Whether it’s our LED department, our media server department, or a camera system department, we all work together to come up with unified solutions. Given our national footprint, along with international partnerships, we’re positioned to support a client just about anywhere they go. Anyone can have gear, but we’ve got the people that make sure that things run smoothly.”
Photo by Keith Griner
PRODUCTION TEAM
- Tour Manager: Joel Eriksson
- Road Manager: Pati Villegas
- Production Manager: Denny Rich
- Production Designer/Creative Producer: Cory FitzGerald, Silent House Group
- Lighting Designer/Programmer: André Petrus
- Lighting Director: Pete Smith
- Lighting Crew Chief: Adam Cooper
- Lighting Techs: Andy Cordova, Myranda Risley, Richard Rothermel
- Lighting, Spots: Daniel Benavides
- Lighting, Dimmers: Rayniel “Ray” Castro
- Video Director / Crew Chief: Bo O’Brien
- Video EIC: Harry Watkinson
- Video, LED/Camera Op: Jacob “Jake” Hampton, David Hartung, John Collin Johnston, Lily O’Brien
- Video Server Tech: Benjamin Rotella
- Video Servers: Adam Fontana/Dark Matter Technologies
- Video Content: Tom Colbourne/BLINK Inc.
- Carpenters: Tara Boughey, Nick Pishghadamian
- Head Rigger: Brian Collins
- Rigger: Daniel Gibbs
- Stage Manager: Brandon Bogaert
- Production Coordinator: Elizabeth Dostart
- Production Assistant: Teraiz Pitta
- Fuse Account Rep: Mike Pirich
- Fuse Project Mgr.: Quinn Adamson
- Upstaging Account Rep.: John Bahnick
- Upstaging Project Mgr.: Josh Wagner
VENDORS
- Lighting and Rigging: Upstaging
- Video: Fuse Technical Group
- Video Content: BLINK Inc.
- Media Servers: Dark Matter Technologies Inc.
- Set: TAIT
- Trucking: SET
GEAR
Lighting
- 2 MA Lighting grandMA 3 full-size Console
- 9 MA Lighting grandMA NPU
- 20 Ayrton Domino
- 106 ACME LYRA Hybrid
- 40 GLP impression X-Bar 20
- 60 GLP FR10 Bars (Stadium Show)
- 60 GLP JDC Line 500
- 14 GLP JDC Line 1000
- 52 GLP JDC1 Strobe
- 16 TMB Solaris Flare Q+LR
- 112 Edgelight Digital Flex Neon, 1,200mm
- 5 Robe BMFL Followspot
- 5 Robe RoboSpot Base Station
- 1 Power Distribution Rack
- 1 Luminex Signal Processing and Network
- 4 Reel EFX DF-50 Hazer
- 2 Martin JEM ZR44 Hi-Mass™ Fog Machine
- 2 MDG theONE™ Atmospheric Generator
- 4 DMX Fan
- 2 5’ Black Hud Truss
- 28 8’ Black Hud Truss
- 14 10’ Black Hud Truss
- 4 Black Hud Truss Corner Block
- 5 10’ Black 12” Truss
- 2 Semi Custom Torm
Video
- 478 ROE Visual CB5 LED Tile in Air Frame
- 216 Yes Tech 3.9 LED Floor
- 1 Brompton Technology Processing
- 2 disguise GX3 Media Server
- 4 4K Camera System, Switching
