For the new Las Vegas staging of the 15 year old international sensation, we were commissioned to create a vast 30,000 square foot environment that would properly situate the iconic world of Stomp in a scale appropriate for Las Vegas. Produced in a newly built 1500 seat proscenium theater, the designed space would encompass an 8000 square foot lobby, an audience pass-thru corridor, towering walls of the auditorium, and the stage space itself. Critically, the challenge was to create a surprising, interactive, and enveloping world in which visitors’ eyes would be opened wider than expected, on entering this place amidst the gloss and glare of Las Vegas casinos and clubs.
On first entering the Lobby, guests are greeted by open mesh steel walls, collaged with a random assortment of spin-able objects - dart boards, roulette wheels, tires, trash can lids, and more. Beyond this screen, the visual anchor of the Lobby sits - a 15’ diameter roulette wheel, reconstituted as a fountain. The surrounding environment is filled with dimensional collages, unexpected and interactive, on walls and above on the ceiling. From this experiential lounge, the audience passes through to the auditorium, wherein nearly every inch of wall space is covered with old signage, car parts, industrial detritus, and much more. Las Vegas turned inside-out, unfolded, unhinged, and strung up on the walls all over. The expansive, operatic scale of the Stomp visual language simply prepares the audience for the live spectacle to come. The iconic stage of trussing and metal objects has been re-branded with monolithic Las Vegas game wheel, mounted on the back wall of the stage space. Composed of found objects, light reflectors, street signs over a metal armature, the wheel is a harmonious blend of the tactile hand-made world of Stomp and the flashing, spinning, bing-bong of casino land.
Found objects, juxtaposed materials, reconstituted objects, unexpected compositions. Jean Tinguely, Rube-Goldberg, Old Las Vegas, junk yards and scrap piles.
