Adrenaline Staging

One evening not too long ago, guests glided on a boat through mysterious dark waters off the coast of Cancun, Mexico. There in the mist, light flickered.

Phantasm? Then a burst of light illuminated an exquisite beach on a private island. The attendees, managers at cement and building materials giant Cemex, clambered onto a shimmering deck. Cocktails. Dinner. More lights splashed from a huge, improvised stage powered by generators. Music gushed from the stage, accompanied by the soulful tones of well-known singer Seal.

“People went to a mirage,” says Andrea Michaels, owner of Extraordinary Events, the Sherman Oaks, Calif.-based company that brought off the Cemex show. “First image: Wow. Fireworks were the finale.”

The beach extravaganza was the climax of a three-day affair; executives had also rebuilt a school and read to youngsters from their childhood story favorites — all of which helped to create an emotional bond with their surroundings.

Emotion is the potent glue of storytelling, compelling theater and events that rocket through guests’ neurons, causing trillions of synapses to fire. When next year’s event rolls around, those lucky guests will remember. Their brains will stir with anticipatory pleasure. They won’t miss it, and they won’t leave early.

High Drama, Low Cost

Theatricality is a mindset, and planners must transport themselves into guests’ minds and feelings. “What do I want the audience to feel? What do I want my 300 guests to experience?” Michaels asks.

She builds drama in layers that peel off unexpectedly with reversals, constant surprises — “To have theatricality, tell a story,” she says.

Cemex spent bucks aplenty for its extravagant theater — estimated at several hundred thousand — but big drama doesn’t have to cost big.

Ellen DeGeneres, TV show host and emcee of the 2007 Academy Awards, has a flair for captivating theater. When she danced through a February 2007 show about hurricane-battered Mardi Gras, her guest art director Matt Trotter evoked emotion onstage for about a thousand dollars with a rented street carnival backdrop from DreamWorld Backdrops.

“It was themed and it was fun,” says Trotter. “Ellen’s family is from New Orleans. She has a personal connection, heartfelt concern.” On the show, singer Harry Connick Jr. jazzed up the street party. Ellen flew in 50 people from New Orleans to pump up the theater.

“Backdrops are obvious nods to theater. They are making a comeback” because artwork detail has bloomed, says Darin Dietz, designer for Pacific Events in San Diego. He uses them if he can’t get his client to spring for full-scale façades and props like those in Hollywood sets.

Lower-cost drama takes finesse.

“Make it three-dimensional,” Dietz suggests. “Throw it up on the wall. Bring elements of the picture into the setting. If you have a lamppost in the scene, put a lamppost in front. Bring colors into linens and flowers. Use the backdrop as an accent to make it more dramatic.”

Thinking Big

Gauge the scale of theatrical elements to the venue, says theater director Jim Dunn, whose 40-year career includes the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco and the Denver Center Theatre Company.

“I do big outdoor events on Mount Tamalpais in the amphitheater,” which seats 4,000, Dunn says. His audience can view San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge from that vantage, so Dunn’s events have world-class visual competition.

This year, he’s staging the musical “Hair” like a rock concert with scaffolding.

“It will start with an old Volkswagen bus painted with peace signs and flowers,” Dunn says. “We’ll roll it down the road filled with hippies, like a circus car with hippies coming out all over the place.”

“When doing outside theater,” he says, “you can go very big.”

Making Contact

Dunn also suggests trying to make more contact with your audience. A colleague achieved this, he says, by dressing up an Italian play with oregano and other Italian cooking smells, hitting the audience’s olfactory senses in addition to sight and sound.

Sean DeFreitas, owner of Designs by Sean Inc. in Florida, used scent machines to emit eucalyptus and orange fragrance for a 500-guest corporate event in which he transformed a hotel ballroom into the Everglades.

Guests plunged into a watery atmosphere the moment they arrived. Frogs greeted them. They crossed a bridge. An alligator (played by amphibian-garbed actor) flashed teeth. From the stage, “Everglades Eddie” welcomed guests to his swamp. Butterflies fluttered. A parrot actor voiced comic feedback. The vice president of the company arrived in a boat.

DeFreitas, who designed costumes before he launched his event business, set the mood quickly and powerfully. He projected a sunset on the wall and swirled fog across the floor. Music dripped into the consciousness of guests. The transformation was complete — executives practically needed hip boots to keep their suits dry.

Ratchet up the Drama with Actors

Michaels uses actors in distinct roles. A few years ago, for a “Phantom of the Opera”-themed event, she had a masked phantom pop out of the floor and mingle, always in character.

“Never break character,” she says.

If the budget allows, DeFreitas likes video projection to keep scenery changing.

DeFreitas aims to astonish. For Event Solutions’ Spotlight Awards in 2006, DeFreitas used people to bring screens onstage. For the Designer of the Year award, he built a 14-foot wheel for an actor who rolled onstage “like a hamster in a wheel in a cool, futuristic metal costume,” DeFreitas says. “We projected the entire category [behind] the wheel.”

Landmark Event Services Inc., a New York-based event production company, also utilizes its human capital.

For a 6,000-person gala at the New York Hilton for sales executives of Tahitian Noni International, the company recreated the streets of New York. At the center was Liberty Island, with a live Lady Liberty. She stood statuesquely, then chatted with sales executives. A mock Chinatown pavilion glowed, bedecked in gold leaf. Little Italy sported customized 32-by-16-foot delicatessen fronts carved from medium-density fiberboard by a computer-driven router, says Lara Baldwin, Landmark’s executive vice president.

When Less is More

But powerful event staging can also be spare.

For “A Few Good Men,” Dunn used a bare stage with cyclone fencing and “noir lighting” — actors half lighted, half dark. Actors remained onstage, and to change scenes, spotlights moved around stage, creating pools of light.

“Rely on the imagination of your audience,” Dunn counsels. “You can do amazing things with minimal thinking.”

Colored light evokes emotional roller coasters. “Red is more emotional than white,” DeFreitas says. “It’s subconscious. You are a puppet master, controlling how you want them to feel at any time.”

One place it’s easy to take a wrong turn is with atmosphere. “Define it consciously,” DeFreitas recommends. “Not just something soft. Lighting and music are the two most important elements.”

Every good story draws tension from conflict, which can be serious or comic. “There’s always something you want to happen,” Dunn says. “People love stories.”