Willie Williams has always been drawn to moments that exist only in the now. Born in Sheffield, he abandoned a potential career in physics to help create shows for punk rock bands in pubs and clubs. Today, his Treatment Studio is the benchmark when it comes to video design in a live setting.
“You have to show up in person, in a specific place, at a specific time,” he says, reflecting on the fleeting magic of live performance.
From the dizzying spectacle of U2’s ZooTV tour to the quiet, intimate video work in plays like Prima Facie and Inter Alia, Williams turns light and video into tools for storytelling, crafting experiences both ephemeral and unforgettable.
Inter Alia reunited the full Prima Facie creative team. Did that familiarity make your job easier?
Absolutely. Every production is a gigantic collaboration between multiple creatives, so at the beginning of any project there is a lot of relationship building. Prima Facie ended up feeling like a family, so we were able to begin Inter Alia with an enormous amount of trust and confidence that we were all heading in the same direction.
How does your work on the two plays complement and differ from itself?
The video design is a very small part of both plays, but each case the video serves several purposes: practical, informative & atmospheric. In Prima Facie, it literally becomes a hands-on practical element, illustrating how dehumanising a police interview can feel to the victim of sexual assault.
Each night for this scene, Jodie Comer sets up the camera herself before going through the interview. Video is also used to illustrate the passing of time and to provide the closing moment of Prima Facie, when the countless case files that line the walls of the set illuminate, reminding us that each of these represents a human being who has been through this awful trauma.
Inter Alia has video moments that serve similar purposes but there is an additional dimension to the video design that I had never come across before. The central character, Jess, is horrified at what she discovers on her teenage son’s laptop and we were asked to create material for the laptop which Rosamund Pike, playing Jess, could react to.
Essentially, we were producing ‘video content’ that the audience would never see, but was there to provoke a response from the performers. It required a very careful and delicate negotiation, to find material that everyone could be comfortable with whilst remaining sufficiently powerful to do the job. In sharp contrast, we also had to provide screen lyrics for a karaoke performance, so there was enormous variety within the small amount of video elements!
Inter Alia
How does your process work when you start a project? Where do you begin when the canvas is literally an empty stage?
It always begins with conversations. With a play, the conversations are principally with the director; for concert touring the conversations would initially be with the performer, but it is always about understanding the aim of a show and seeing how my contribution can become part of the greater vision for the piece.
I also have my own creative agenda, having ideas which I would like to see realised, seeing if there is a way we can push the boundaries of what’s been done previously, or advancing the form in some way. It’s always fun to try to show an audience something they’ve never seen before.
You’ve described your work as “painting with light” — when did you first realise that light and video could be expressive tools, not just technical ones?
Much of my early inspiration came from seeing what was going on in the world of performance art. Through the 1980s, people like Laurie Anderson and Nam Jun Paik were making fabulously imaginative audio-visual work in art galleries with very basic technology. Performances relied on equipment like multiple carousel slide projectors which must have been an absolute nightmare to take on tour. Consequently, I have always looked at these elements as expressive tools rather than technical ones.
This also gave me an early understanding that light and video are essentially two sides of the same element and that you will get a much more cohesive result if they are considered together. It always comes down to ideas – it’s very hard to get a satisfying result if you begin with equipment.
Elton John
You started out designing live shows in the 1980s. How did you get into this unique field?
I pretty much ran away with the circus, if you could call punk rock a circus. I grew up in Sheffield and was a real all-rounder at school – very bright but directionless. At that point in time there were no grown-ups whispering in your ear “have you ever considered a career in the performing arts?”, so I opted for sciences at A level.
I was all set to study physics at University College London, when the universe intervened in the form of punk rock and for a couple of years our small nation was completely up-ended. The message in the air was “anybody can do anything”, and what I really wanted to do was hang out with bands and see if I could help with shows in pubs and clubs. Abandoning my academic career before it had even started, I got into a grey transit van and never looked back.
You’ve worked with everyone from U2 to the National Theatre. How do you decide which projects to take on? Is there a common thread?
The only common thread is that I need to feel personally invested. Sometimes that investment might be in the content of the show, in the music, in the performers themselves or simply that a particular show might be a vehicle for an idea that I really want to try out.
Scale isn’t an issue; I’ve got quite good at making very big shows, but I can be equally happy in a small club if the performance is captivating. Similarly, as much as I love directing shows and being in control of everything, I can find it just as satisfying to focus on one small element of a greater whole. It’s the variety that keeps life interesting.
How much of your work is about storytelling versus visual impact? Or are those all the same thing in your world?
Good question. Ultimately, I think both of these elements exist to create emotional connection. Our brains use a combination of vision and imagination to create an emotional response, so my goal is to try to enable the viewer to forget the technique and surrender more completely to the emotional content of the performance.
U2 at the Sphere
AI, XR, immersive tech — there’s a lot of buzz around new frontiers in live performance. Do you ever find that having too many tools or tech options can be creatively paralysing?
Technology can be a wonderful tool for realising ideas, but the ideas have to come first. Leading with technology in isolation is the surest route to mediocrity that I can think of. The quality range of the current selection of tech-driven shows is enormous, ranging from the glorious to the mind-numbingly dreadful. It’s a little reassuring to see some of the poorer shows starting to fail – the novelty of the technology is no longer sufficient to satisfy an audience.
Is there a particular piece you’ve done — a show, an installation, even just a moment — that you feel most proud of?
I’m certainly proud of having had a hand in the evolution of the format of modern rock and pop shows. William Gibson wrote in Wired magazine that “Willie Williams’ innovations have become industry standards”, which is about all the validation a man could hope for in one lifetime. In terms of specific projects though, U2’s ZooTV tour (1992-93) was probably the Mount Everest of rock show design.
It was a mad two-year romp that got increasingly, gloriously out of hand as it went along and pretty much defined what rock and pop shows still look like today. There was one moment, at a show in Stockholm, where U2 were joined on stage by the male half of Abba who duetted on a cover version of Dancing Queen, performed underneath a revolving mirrorball Trabant car, whilst being broadcast live from Stockholm to a single house – the home of an MTV contest-winner in Nottingham, UK. Even in the moment I was able to realise that this would likely be the most surreal moment of my career.
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Your work is largely ephemeral — once the show ends, it’s gone. Does that transience appeal to you?
I used to find it frustrating but I’ve come to love that, in order to experience the work, you have to commit; You have to show up in person, in a specific place, at a specific time. You have to commit to being part of this communal moment, with no guaranteed outcome, that will only happen now and then will be gone forever.
I have a favourite quote by Merce Cunningham, the legendary choreographer, who said: "You have to love dancing to stick to it. It gives you nothing back, no manuscripts to store away, no paintings to show on walls and maybe hang in museums, no poems to be printed and sold, nothing but that single, fleeting moment when you feel alive."
Which project kept you up at night — in a good way or a bad way?
Oh, they all do. This is no industry for those who are keen to get to bed early…
Inter Alia runs until 13 September
Inter Alia will stream in cinemas from 4 September. Find tickets here: https://interalia.ntlive.com/
