Not many places are building live entertainment as fast as the Gulf right now. Across Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar, festivals, ceremonies and resident shows are going up at a pace I haven't seen anywhere else. A lot of my work over the last few years has been there.
A region inventing its own spectacle
The Gulf projects I've worked on sit across most of the forms the region is investing in: the opening and closing ceremonies of Expo 2020 Dubai, the Darb Lusail Festival in Qatar ahead of the World Cup, the VIA Riyadh grand opening with John Legend, and in Diriyah Season the immersive Souk Wonders and the heritage piece Terhal. Different briefs — ceremony, festival, gala, immersive theatre — but they're all part of the same push to build new cultural infrastructure quickly and at scale.
Heritage and ambition in the same brief
The specific thing about the Gulf work is the balance the clients ask for. The piece has to feel rooted in local heritage and still deliver something with no precedent. A Najdi marketplace becomes an immersive labyrinth. A young traveller's journey becomes a 36-metre kinetic stage. A new district's opening becomes a flagship gala. Both sides have to be honest — you can't fake the culture, and you can't fake the scale either.
Working with no template
On a lot of these projects there's no template to copy. The thing being built often hasn't existed before — not in that form, not in that place. You design it with the local producers, the creative houses and the cultural references in the room, and you figure it out together.