I know many of you have followed my series of Eurovision staging, looking at all the elements that come to play when staging your song. We’ve looked at Video, Lighting, Pyrotechnics and Wind & Smoke, so what else is there? Well, to day I just want to pay homage to some brilliant (in my opinion anyway!) examples of songs on stage that have either bought all the elements together or have come up with a unique and innovative way to stage their song.

For me the easiest question to answer, when it comes to Eurovision, is ‘what do you think has been the best ever staging?’, easy because I can tell you my answer without missing a beat – Estonia; 2015; Elina Born & Stig Rästa; Goodbye to Yesterday.

The story telling in this song is just perfect, you get the sense that both are singing their part of the story as their thoughts, so it’s not really their voices that are creating the duet but their individual experience of the same event i.e a break up, told from their different perspectives.

The second most fabulous element in this the acting, he is quite nonchalant about the whole thing, she is angry (just look at the glare in her eyes, if looks could kill Stig would barely have made it out of the first chorus. As the song goes on Elina’s anger softens and dissolves into sadness, with a single tear falling down her cheek by the end of the song. I mean, really it’s just brilliant.

The figments of imagination play out throughout the song too. In the beginning it’s just Stig with his guitar, then Elina appears as a memory or a phantom inside his head, as we go through the song it Elina somehow transforms into the ‘real’ person and Stig becomes the ‘ghost’, and then the clever little trick at the end as he appears to completely vanish from the stage, leaving Elina alone on stage – it’s genius and I think the best lesson in how to stage your song. The use of technology is minimal, but the oh so very human element of raw emotion and story-telling is nigh on perfect.

What do you think of this staging work? Did you enjoy the song and do you think the staging enhanced or distracted from it? Tell us your thoughts in the comments section…

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Author: Lisa-Jayne Lewis
Source: Eurovision Ireland