When Weeknd makes headlines for the Super Bowl halftime show on Sunday, the stage will be in the stands, not on the pitch, to simplify the transition from game to performance. In the days leading up to the event, workers visited a tent outside Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Florida, to receive nasal swabs for Covid-19 tests. And although a smaller team is hosting the show this year, the bathroom trailers have been running three times as much water as normal – because of all that hand washing.
In the midst of a global pandemic, the gigantic logistical enterprise that is the show of the interval has become even more complicated.
In a typical year, a huge stage is smashed to pieces on the football field, the sound and lighting equipment is quickly set up by hundreds of stage assistants working shoulder to shoulder, and fans flow into the grass to watch the extravagance. This year, there is a limit to the number of people who can participate in the production, a crowd of fans rooting for him is out of the question. And only 1,050 people are expected to work to perform the show, a fraction of the workforce in most years.
The pandemic interrupted live performances in much of the country, and many television shows resorted to pre-recorded segments to ensure the safety of artists and the public. The production team for the intermission show, however, had the intention of putting together a live performance at the stadium that hoped to impress the television audience. To make this dream come true, they would need contingency plans, thousands of KN95 masks and a willingness to break with decades of intermission show tradition.
“It will be a different-looking show, but it will still be a live show,” said Jana Fleishman, executive vice president of Roc Nation, the entertainment company founded by Jay-Z that was chosen by the NFL in 2019 to create gaming performances striking as the Super Bowl. “It’s a whole new way of doing everything.”
One of the first logistical puzzles was figuring out how to pick team members at the airport and transport them to and from the hotel, said Dave Meyers, the program’s production executive and operations director at Diversified Production Services, a production event with New Jersey headquarters that is working on the halftime show.
“Usually you put everyone in a van, throw your bags in the back, everyone sits on each other’s laps,” said Meyers. “This can not happen.”
Instead, they rented more than 300 cars to transport everyone safely.
Many of the company’s employees have been in Tampa for weeks, operating in what they call a “complex” outside Raymond James Stadium, the home of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The complex includes 15-meter-long office trailers, which used to accommodate about 20 employees each, but are now limited to six. There are socially distant dining tents, where people eat prepackaged food, and a sign that the tables have been cleaned: those with chairs leaning against them.
Outside the perimeter of the event, there is a tent where staff at the halftime show have been testing Covid-19. Team members are tested every 48 hours, but now that the day of the game is approaching, key employees, including those close to the artists, are taking the test every day, Meyers said. Every day, workers do a health check on their smartphones and, if released, they receive a color-coded bracelet, with a new color each day so that no one can wear yesterday’s without being detected.
Every time workers enter the stadium or a new area of the site, they scan a badge hanging around their neck so that if someone is positive for Covid-19 or needs to be quarantined, the NFL will know who else was nearby. And contingency plans exist if workers are to be quarantined: key employees, including Meyers, have replacements who are ready to take their places.
All these measures are taken so that Weeknd can take the stage on Sunday for a 12-minute act that intends to match previous years, when the country was not in the midst of a global health crisis.
“Our biggest challenge is to make this program appear to be unaffected by Covid,” said Meyers.
The challenge was clear on Thursday at a news conference on the halftime show. When Weeknd walked over to the microphone, he scanned the room and noted, “It’s half empty.” His words were perhaps a preview of what the stadium might look like for people watching from home. (About 25,000 fans will be present – just over a third of their capacity – and they will be accompanied by thousands of cardboard cutouts.)
But The Weeknd (Abel Tesfaye), a 30-year-old Canadian pop star who has hits like “Can’t Feel My Face” and “Starboy”, is known for his theatrical talent. His work usually has a taciturn touch, an avant-garde touch and even a little blood and blood (he promised that he would keep the show “PG” in between).
This will be the second Super Bowl halftime show produced in part by Jay-Z and Roc Nation, who were recruited by the NFL at a time when artists refused to work with the league in solidarity with former San Colin Kaepernick Francisco 49ers quarterback who started to kneel during the national anthem to protest police brutality and racial injustice.
The NFL and Roc Nation are keeping quiet about the details of the program to raise expectations, so it is unclear whether it will have the big budget effects of previous halftime shows, which featured Jennifer Lopez dancing on a giant spinning mast, Katy Perry riding an animatronic lion and Diana Ross by helicopter in a memorable way.
What is clear is that there is unlikely to be anything like the intimate moment that Lady Gaga had with some of her fans during her performance in 2017, when she put her hands together and hugged one of them before returning to the stage for “Bad Romance” . Weeknd is entering the scene in a much more distant world.
Ken Belson contributed reporting.