For the 54th Eid Al Etihad ceremony, the challenge was not simply to deliver a National Day spectacle, but to stage a live, multi-layered cultural moment within a site that was still being built. For the first time, the event was required to serve three functions simultaneously: a modern National Day show, the official opening of the Zayed National Museum, and the inaugural public performance by the newly formed UAE National Orchestra. From the outset, the museum was positioned not as a backdrop, but as the cultural, architectural and narrative heart of the event.
Wonder Works, led by Production Manager Ben O’Neill, provided technical design and management for the ceremony. Working closely with People and their Artistic Director Tim Elliott, the team led the initial technical specification and oversaw the design and delivery of the structural build, technical integration and CAD designs throughout the project.
While every National Day ceremony comes with its own site complexities, this one introduced an additional challenge. The performance environment physically straddled multiple site jurisdictions and was built within an active construction zone, while the museum itself and surrounding plots were still being completed. The team used CAD not only to align technical disciplines, but as a negotiation and communication tool with the wider construction contractors, ensuring the ceremony’s requirements could be delivered safely under an immovable deadline.
Ben O’Neill: “The biggest challenge on this project wasn’t any single technical element, it was negotiating a live construction site while keeping the creative vision intact. CAD became as much a management tool as a design tool.”
The museum façade became the primary storytelling canvas. A detailed LIDAR scan enabled the creation of an accurate digital twin, allowing projection content, designed by Moment Factory, to arrive largely pre-aligned. One challenge was that the museum’s secondary public entrance sat directly in the centre of the projection surface. A substantial temporary infill structure was designed and built to visually extend the façade, transforming it into a continuous mapped plane without compromising the building’s design language. Additional roof-mounted infrastructure supported aerial performance winches, lighting and the “falcon boy” sequence, with light and projection carefully balanced to sculpt the museum’s signature wings.
Central to the design was the decision to make the newly formed UAE National Orchestra the visual and emotional hero of the ceremony. Rather than being tucked into a conventional pit, the 71 musicians were elevated and fully visible, framed alongside projection, choreography, and aerial performance. Iterative adjustments to pit height and stage layout ensured the orchestra read as protagonists, giving live music a commanding presence at the heart of the story.
The grandstand itself received the same design attention as the staging. With audience numbers deliberately kept to around 800, the team could prioritise quality over capacity. Low-lying and grounded, it mirrored the museum’s massing, creating an embedded audience experience that felt intentional and fully connected to the performance environment – a key learning for future ceremonies.
Among the many complex moments, the pearl divers sequence stood out as a defining achievement. Performers dived into water, triggering projection-mapped splashes that climbed the museum façade, extended into the sky via drones, and resolved with an aerial descent carrying a glowing pearl. A familiar National Day motif, delivered here as a fully integrated, cross-disciplinary set-piece.
Ben O’Neill: “Delivering this ceremony in such a complex environment was a true test of collaboration, planning, and adaptability. Seeing it come together so seamlessly was extremely rewarding.”
Ultimately, Eid Al Etihad 54 succeeded not through scale alone, but through cohesion. Despite late creative lock, budget constraints and extraordinary site complexity, the final environment read as intentional and unified – a National Day ceremony fully embedded within the architecture, culture and future of the Zayed National Museum.
CREDITS
Creative: Rawdha Al Qubaisi – Project Director, National Projects Office, Eisa Al Subousi – Head of Strategy & Creative, Tim Elliott – Artistic Director, Gavin Robins – Creative Director, Josh Zangen – Production Designer, Brian Buckner – Associate Production Designer, Mrinali Thanwani – Assistant Production Designer, Studio Al Watan, Musicom & Eden Mulholland – Composers, Bruno Poet – Lighting Designer, Moment Factory – Content Designer
Executive: William Jensen – Managing Director, Spectaculars, Robyn Camilleri – Project Director, Ward Alesh – Project Coordinator
Creative Production: Alfred Kouris – Associate Director, Hamza El Balaj – Director Associate, Staging, Anne Tanaka – Senior Producer, Hazem Al Tattan – Producer, Andrew Jeffrey – Producer, Janie Valentine – Onsite Producer, Megan Hind – Onsite Producer, Soha Frem – Lead Choreographer
Technical: Mark Fogwill – Head of Technical, People, Simon Jones – Production Director, Lisken Jellings – Associate to Production Director, Ben O’Neill – Production Manager, Benjamin Pitts – Production Manager, Lighting, Nick Read – Production Manager, Set LX, Jim Upchurch – Production Manager, Rigging, Dave Lee – Production Manager, Audio & Comms, Scott Walker – Production Manager, Video, Carl Martin – Production Manager, Video, Jerry Singleton – Production Manager, Power, John Wyse – Production Manager, Staging & Scenic, Jayson Scarbrow – Production Manager, Workshop, Fergus Campbell – Production Manager, Workshop, Ferdinand Calara Alvaran – Production Manager, Site Carpenter, Mark Battle – Production Manager, Drones, Atilla Gezman – Production Manager, Crew, Andrew Blanchfield – Production Manager, Fountains, Jayson Beck – Onsite Production Manager, Mark Bannister – Onsite Technical & Operations Manager, Alexis Whitney – Onsite Technical & Operations Manager, Jihad Younes – Onsite Technical & Operations Manager, Billy Boulton – Assistant Production Manager, Power & LX, Hector Gaìtan – CAD Show Designer
