Bandit Rocks with Westlife at Croke Park

Westlife’s spectacular Croke Park Stadium show in Dublin was enjoyed by a sold-out live audience of 85,000, with Bandit Lites supplying all onstage lighting.

The band’s stunningly visual 2008 show – celebrating an incredible 10 years at the very top of British pop - was designed and directed by William Baker, who also designed the set, with the lighting design created by Baz Halpin.

On tour and for Croke Park, lighting was operated/directed by Dave Lee. The show was produced by Production North.

Lee was joined by a strong Bandit crew consisting of the legendary Johnny Harper, Rob Starksfield, Rick Butler, Jason Dixon and Joe Simpson.

This year’s design saw Halpin going very theatrical, with all the structures concealed, apart from a centre stage ‘W’ shaped truss. Lighting fixtures were all carefully positioned on a series of angled trussing sections, some of which moved. This ensured the gaps were filled, and that light could be focussed from all angles right across the performance area for even and balanced coverage.

Combined with a highly dynamic video and set design, colourful and provocative video content and the slick choreography for which Westlife is renowned, the show has been hailed as one of their best ever live extravaganzas.

Starting upstage, there were 6 moving trusses, all suspended on two points each. Running on Bandit’s own fully programmable Motor Data control system, which was operated by Rob Starksfield, each truss contained 3 Martin Professional MAC 2K luminaires.

Two diagonally running side trusses each contained 8 Martin MAC 2K Washes (and 2 moving video screens below). To the front edge of these was the ‘W’ shaped truss, which apart from fulfilling a scenic function and continuing the ‘W’ theme of the stage set, was rigged with 16 Martin MAC 2K Spots. During the acoustic section of the set, the ‘W’ truss was dropped in, and sat a couple of feet off the floor, providing an intimate backdrop to the band.

At the front of stage was a 50ft curved truss with 13 Martin MAC 2K Spots, and then 3 smaller downstage trusses, each with three 2K washes for key lighting and a bit of ACL style ‘zappiness’.

A rear spot truss contained 4 Lycian 1.2K spots with long throw lenses, which created some fabulous, strong and very tight back-lit looks, making up some of the show’s defining visual moments.

The lamp count was rounded off with 16 Martin MAC 300s, which sat on the floor lighting the set and doing aerial effects, 2 Studio Due Space Flowers on the floor either side of stage, 6 bars of ACLs and 6 Coemar SuperCycs to light up the far upstage backdrop - a stripy design containing a subliminal ‘W’.

Dave Lee operated the show using 2 WholeHog II consoles, one from the touring show and a slave to handle the extras, all of which were matched in to the general show looks and driven by pre-existing show cues, to ensure they looked integrated.

Bandit UK Chief Executive, Lester Cobrin says, “It’s always exciting to be involved in stadium shows, and it was great to be working with Production North on one as memorable as this. Thank you to the teamwork and foresight of our crew, and the efficiency of our systems to ensure that everything went so smoothly.”