Every year the Global Leadership Summit brings nearly 10,000 leaders to Chicago, with half a million more watching around the world. Pastors, nonprofit directors, business owners, people carrying communities on their backs. A lot of them show up worn out. The opener had to meet them there.
You can't lift somebody until you've admitted how heavy it is. So the opener starts by naming the weight, the stuff everyone in that room had been reading about and carrying all year, and only then starts to climb.
We opened live with Sharon Irving, a Golden Buzzer winner from America's Got Talent and a close friend, singing Andra Day's "Rise Up" in one unbroken shot while a hydraulic lift carried her up out of the stage. Yes, she rose during "Rise Up." Sometimes the obvious thing is the right thing.
Then the world opened up around her. A pre-recorded film, projection-mapped onto the set, filled the room with more singers and performers as the space kept growing.
Then the monologue. An original spoken word piece that stacked up the weight of the year. Wars on the front page. Refugees on page three. A world that felt like it was coming apart. Live performers walked in and out of the projected world while it played, and after a while you stopped being able to tell what was filmed and what was happening in front of you.
Then we came back to the live stage, with custom graphics built from scratch, and brought in a 100-person gospel choir to finish it.
With half a million people watching, the room went quiet before it went loud. For leaders who'd shown up wondering if any of it was worth it, that was the answer we were going for.