The Saw Doctor creating a stage fit for a Pope
Once a drummer with one of Ireland’s most popular bands, Johnny Donnelly is used to performing for big crowds, but even he has never encountered anything like the logistics required for this week’s landmark visit
SOME 25,000 sliced pans and 31,250 litres of milk: two basic figures that capture the incredible logistics involved in staging the Papal Mass in the Phoenix Park this coming Sunday.
But the vast amounts of bread and milk due to be consumed by Massgoers are just a drop in the organisational ocean when it comes to Pope Francis’s pastoral visit to Ireland for the World Meeting of Families.
Although organisers have had far longer to prepare for this visit than Pope John Paul II’s tour and although the number of people making the pilgrimage to the Phoenix Park will be less than half the attendance on September 29, 1979, the Papal Mass still represents the largest scale event in the country since then.
Up to 750,000 people are expected to attend events around the World Meeting of Families across the entire weekend: 37,000 at a Pastoral Congress in the RDS which takes place before the Pope’s arrival in Dublin; 45,000 at the Pope’s visit to the Knock Shrine; more than 70,000 at the Festival of Families in Croke Park on Saturday evening and half a million in the Phoenix Park for the closing Mass on Sunday afternoon.
The logistics are enormous but while organisers in 1979 had just ten weeks to plan an entire papal visit, the teams behind this event have had up to two years to prepare, with a full-time WMOF staff of 58 working at Clonliffe College in Drumcondra, Dublin.
EX-SAW Doctors drummer Johnny Donnelly, who now heads up global events company Arcana, has been tasked with creating the altar, stage and show in the Phoenix Park. Arcana will also install the stage and seating for the RDS Pastoral Congress.
Fresh from working on the Volvo Ocean Race and Galway Arts Festival, Donnelly is now stuck into the logistics of perfecting a creative production around the Mass. Having worked on the Eucharistic Congress in 2012, he’s in familiar creative territory.
‘It’s going very well, we have a great team and have had no disasters,’ he says.
‘But at the moment it’s more like a Stephen King novel in my head, full of potential horror.
‘We’re into stage two of the build, the altar will go in ... so our biggest challenge is putting everything together and also creating a production that reflects the solemnity of the day — we won’t be putting Metallica on stage before the Mass.
‘It’s not like working with U2 or Coldplay, who’d come in with their own show. We have to create a show.
‘It will be half a million people in a field with nowhere else to go — you can’t expect people to stand around from 8am until Mass starts at 3pm with nothing to do.
‘The RDS and Croke Park are functioning event venues. The Phoenix Park is the big logistical challenge with many variables to consider.
‘Compared to what the OPW and Garda Síochána have to do, our job is small, easy. The logistics of crowd control are massive, especially when you’re telling people they’ll have to walk five to seven kilometres to get to and from the Mass.’
Donnelly and designer Tom Rohan came up with the double arch design for the altar and stage
A 55-metre arch, which was constructed in Britain, spans the Papal Cross and will act as a stage for an orchestra, 3,000-strong choir and other performers. Paddy Maloney from the Chieftains is expected to perform, providing a link back to the 1979 Mass at which he also played.
‘The design of the arch was easy enough, at the end of the day it’s a semi-circle,’ says Donnelly. ‘It’s based on the logo of the WMOF. We also used the Claddagh ring as a symbol which resonated with us for the Joy of Love theme.
‘The arches arrived in trucks like pieces of Lego. You then put them together whichever way you want.’
A smaller internal arch will house the altar and provide sanctuary for the Pope in the form of a small room with a couch and dressing space.
‘The Pope will be there for about six minutes before the Mass starts,’ says Donnelly. ‘He won’t be putting his feet up.’
Two Popemobiles brought over from the Vatican will be used during the weekend — one to tour Dublin city centre on Saturday and one to go around the Phoenix Park site before Mass.
There have been funny moments during the intense preparations.
‘One carpet supplier phoned up and said he’d like to donate the carpet for the altar, probably thinking it would measure three metres by five metres,’ says Donnelly.
‘When I told him we needed thousands of square metres of red carpet he nearly had a heart attack. He didn’t donate it in the end.’
Donnelly says there has been no discussion yet about what will happen to all that carpet after the Mass — 3,500 metres of carpet laid by Des Kelly Carpets for the 1979 Papal Mass was reportedly sold afterwards.
The room used by Pope John Paul II — a space beneath the Papal Cross complete with bed, toilet and dressing room — will not be used this time around. Nor will the Papal throne constructed for the 1979 visit, which is currently on display at an exhibition in the Phoenix Park visitor centre.
‘It’s a new time with a new Pope,’ says Donnelly. ‘We thought it would be nice to have a new Papal chair.
‘We had a meeting in the Vatican during which they said it should be simple and comfortable for a man of 81 years of age. We were given the width and height measurements and told it should have arm rests.
WE ALSO worked closely with master of ceremonies Fr Damian McNeice, who had very strong opinions about how the chair should be.’
The chair is currently being finished by a firm in Belfast.
‘Of course we looked at all the footage from 1979 and read all the available material,’ says Donnelly.
‘You don’t want to replicate what was done then, it’s already been done but certainly, many aspects of the 1979 build were amazingly spot
on — the positioning of the altar for example. There are so many variables involved.’
Thousands of staff will work ‘backstage’ at the Papal Mass while 600 clergy and 600 musicians will also have to be in place from early that morning.
Arcana has a team of 30-40 while various staging companies also have teams of up to 50 people.
‘The logistics are enormous so there’s a huge knock-on effect,’ says Donnelly. ‘As one part of our team is de-constructing the stage and seating in the RDS, the other part will be setting up the stage in the Phoenix Park.’
On the day, Donnelly will be on stage shepherding acts on and off quickly and making sure everything runs smoothly. It will be the end of a nine-month project that he has ‘slept and breathed’. ‘We had rehearsals all day Saturday from 7am to 10pm,’ he says. ‘We had to be back in at 5am yesterday so my plan was to bring a sleeping bag and sleep under a table onsite. ‘Or who knows, I might sleep on the Papal couch, warm it up for him.’
He hasn’t yet met the Pope and would think twice about doing so. ‘It’s not really my thing,’ he says.
‘If there was an opportunity to meet the Pope, I’d rather someone who’s really interested have the opportunity.
‘He’s not a hero of mine but I admire and respect him. As far as I’m concerned he’s just Francis, a human being.
‘If I met him I’d probably just say “How’ ya?”. What else can you say? “Love your show”!’