USA - Megan Thee Stallion’s Hot Girl Summer Tour shined brighter thanks to The Playground Design Collective’s innovative use of Elation’s Artiste Monet profile luminaire. As the Grammy-winner’s first headlining tour and The Playground’s inaugural collaboration with her, the production dazzled audiences across North America and Europe, bringing her signature energy to life with visually striking stage designs.
The Playground handled design and creative direction as one of the year’s hottest touring shows. The show featured production designers Sooner Routhier and Trevor Ahlstrand, and creative and show designer Curtis Adams. Dane Kick took on the lighting programmer and director role, while Jason Giaffo served as a lighting programmer. Fuse Technical Group was the lighting and video vendor for the tour.
The Playground team created a multi-level playground with performance spaces that perfectly matched Megan Thee Stallion’s energetic style. Inspired by the organic shape language that embodied the themes of the show, The Playground designed a giant 30ft circular LED video stage with an LED video floor as the primary performance space, three massive monolithic LED video towers, a double snake-head-shaped lighting rig, and a circular runway. These elements reached far into the audience to create an immersive concert experience, bringing Megan closer to her adoring fans.
The lighting design featured 92 Elation Artiste Monet profile moving heads, alongside six Proteus Brutus wash FX fixtures, creating a dynamic and immersive environment for Megan’s powerful stage presence and accompanying dancers.
“The Monets were the workhorse of the lighting rig,” says lighting programmer and director Dane Kick. “Every gobo or beam you saw came from them. We placed them throughout the trussing, on the stage floor, and behind our upstage video wall for Megan's dramatic entrance at the top of the show. We also had six in our FOH truss that we're used to light the VIP riser during the show.”
Production designer Trevor Ahlstrand adds: “The Monets gave us everything we needed – they were not only key lights but effect lights too. With their fantastic colour mixing and output, we could achieve fully saturated colours, from fiery reds to soft, dichroic hues, helping us tell the story of transformation that runs through the show.
“The colour out of the Monet is great, having the ability to not only mix with CMY but RGB,” said Ahlstrand, referring to the Monet’s SpectraColor colour mixing system. SpectraColor combines CMY with RGB and variable CTO to produce colour combinations that have traditionally been hard for LED luminaires to achieve. “This feature also allows more output for fully saturated colours. In addition to the colour and output, it has a good gobo selection, animation and shuttering. All of this makes it a great all-around fixture for all applications.”
Some of the show’s highlight moments included a massive snake-like lighting sculpture that encapsulates Megan as she performs her emotional ballad Cobra, and a giant dichroic chrysalis that reveals the performer.
The 92 Monets were spread across the stage design, including in the ‘double snake head’ lighting rig. “The Monets really made it come to life,” said creative and show designer Curtis Adams. “There is a particular focus where the Monets are splayed out into the audience, making the rig look like a giant crown and immersing the spectators. It is definitely one of the epic looks of the show!”
Additional to the rig were Proteus Brutus fixtures placed in the FOH truss and used as dancer keylight.
