April 02
Ok, here we go! Day 1 out of many!
Welcome to our home away from home for the next 7 weeks! The Tel Aviv Expo, located on the north side of Tel Aviv. The original Expo was actually built before the birth of the State of Israel but relocated to its current location in 1948. Our stage is located in Pavilion 2 that opened four years ago and is the newest building on the compound. Our greenroom and delegation bubble are located next door, in Pavilion 1 and the two buildings will be connected with a tunnel.
Hall 2 is at the smaller end of a Eurovision venue, but make no mistake, that has not affected the ambition of this year’s production. The 7 200 spectators inside our main venue will get a show that will blow their socks off! We will also have about 1500 spectators in green room to create the stunning vibrating atmosphere together with you in there during the breath taken moment of when the votes are revealed.
Being on a fairground with multiple buildings and access points makes it ideal for a production of the magnitude of a Eurovision Song Contest.
This is Hall 2. Give us a couple of days, and it will be filled with cases, trusses, machinery and crew, being utterly busy with the build up of this production. We just need the bomb squad to be allowed to work with us, and then it should be all honkey donkey dory.
The muppet kicking around in a pink high vis vest is our load in manager Erik Blomdahl!
The PRG rigging team has done all their markings on the floor. We’ve a bit over 700 rigging points, and as usual, we are at the limit of what is physically possible to load the ceiling with.
We got a dayshift and nightshift team working hard on cutting holes in the panels above the top beams at 132 locations in the venue. We need these holes to be able to rig off the top beams, to prevent us from losing 1,8 meters trim height of the overall set, which would be devastating for the production. It’s not going as fast as we would like, but they are getting there, slowly but surely.
Since there is not that much to show on the ground floor, let’s go to floor minus 1. And no, this is not the strip club floor level…………….
This is where we have located all our suppliers work shops.
So far, it’s only Riedel that has moved in. We’ll get back to them with a more detailed report at a later stage, when they are not out for a coffee break when I come to visit……………..
We’ve also built a bunch of dressing rooms down here, for our opening and interval acts. And oh boy, do we got some cool things cooking for y’all? Yes we do!
Minus 1 is also home for one of the most important rooms in this produciton- the safety induction room! This is our Health and Safety Manager Shai Spetgang’s kingdom. Not beacuse he’s king, but he is conducting the inductions.
We’ll resurface tomorrow and check out how load in is progressing.
See you!
