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Brent Clark creates special space on stage for Sarah McLachlan with Chauvet

The 22-date USA leg of Canadian singer-songwriter Sarah McLachlan’s “Better Broken” tour began July 1, 2026, at the First Bank Amphitheatre outside Nashville and ran through mid-August. The tour’s lighting designer was Brent Clark who comments: “Sarah is a great artist and collaborator. I love lighting her shows - it allows me to paint and get into the mood of the songs.”

“For this show, I had this video of curves in mind”, he continues. “It had everything being round and kinda soft but extremely tough. So, the idea started with how do I create an environment where things can be soft, but also have a toughness to them?”

Ultimately, this vision led to an immersive design that was sweeping and elegant on one hand, but also clearly defined and assertive on the other. A cardinal element of the design was an arch that ran across mid-stage, framing the video wall, which was sometimes partially obscured, adding an element of mystery to the scene.

Lighting fixtures lined the stage and its neighboring flown truss structures, which appeared, in Clark’s words “to reach out and kind of hug the stage”. This effect was enhanced by Clark’s use of fog around the arch. “I was just trying to frame Sarah in a different way”, he says of this design element. “I wanted to create a sense of depth, and the arch helped me achieve it.”

Displaying content from the Ultimate Dream Machine, the video wall framed by the arch added an ethereal element to the show, while contributing to the visual identity of each tune in the 20-song set. Also playing a key role in Clark’s design were fourteen Chauvet Professional Strike Array 1 fixtures, which like the rest of the rig were supplied by Christie Lites. The fixtures were positioned along inner truss circles and downstage.

The effect of the Strike Array 1 and every other fixture in the rig was enhanced by the way Clark set up his risers, angling them downward. “I wanted the band to see everyone in the audience”, he explains. “The risers were off set for camera purposes. Given where the piano sat it got hard to get a good clean shot of Sarah, so we played with the riser placement to give us the cleanest shots possible.”

Clark adds another reason for the riser configuration: “I wanted this design to draw everything back to the center of the video wall. The idea was to create the feeling that you are falling into space.”

(Photos: Chauvet Professional/Ben Neely Photography)

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