Dermot Kennedy and the Stage Designers Behind His Most Ambitious Tour to Date

Tasked with creating a collapsable, tourable and still impactful world for Dermot Kennedy’s The Weight of the Woods tour to inhabit was no easy feat. But with credits spanning performances for Justin Bieber and Sabrina Carpenter at Coachella 2026, as well as opening ceremonies for The Olympics and the FIFA World Cup Kick Off Concert, London-based stage design studio STUFISH Entertainment Architects (STUFISH), was well equipped for the challenge. The company is fronted by a team of expert architects, designers, visualisers, directors, production managers, technical specialists and producers who have been pioneering new ways to inspire audiences for more than three decades.

The collaboration between Dermot Kennedy and STUFISH began at the point of ideation, with the studio contributing as creative directors and stage designers. With his most ambitious show to date at London’s O2 Arena in the tour schedule, alongside a landmark stadium show in Dublin, the team had to ensure the design could withstand the demands of touring while filling venues of vastly different scales. Crucially, it needed to develop the same impact and immersive experience to every audience.

Bringing Ireland’s Landscapes and Heritage to Life on Stage

Speaking to Zarya Vrabcheva, senior designer at STUFISH, she explained how the studio’s role as creative directors “Helped shape the flow of the show and the narrative, working very closely with the video designer, James Lockey, lighting designer, Owen Pritchard Smith and video director, Glen Leyser to develop the show together.” 

Connecting with Dermot early in the process allowed the team to gain a deep understanding of the world he wanted to create. “His ambition was to create something that feels very uncontrived and very honest to his work and to his music,” Zarya explained.“Something that was able to encapsulate the mood and weight of the music and needed to sometimes disappear and reappear again. We came up with the concept of a forest, but we wanted it to be a very living, very breathing organism that is able to both embrace Dermot and his band, but also give them the ability to get lost in it. The set and visuals gave us the flexibility to go into various environments besides the woods, sometimes a graveyard or the sea.” 

To achieve this transformation, the set needed to be more abstract than literal. This flexibility allowed it to tell the story of the show, moving from a dark, silhouetted woodland opening through warm seasonal shifts before arriving at an emotional conclusion.

Several very specific Irish locations fed into the design, including the Skellig Islands, Muckross Abbey and Ballinskelligs Abbey. These sites have already featured heavily throughout Dermot’s album artwork. “All of these places were already present in the album promos and shoots that [Dermot Kennedy] had done for various videos so we were given a lot of that material before starting to design the show.” Zarya explained.

What is particularly remarkable is the care and attention to detail embedded throughout the design.When asked about elements audiences might not immediately notice, Zarya highlighted an idea inspired by Muckross Abbey, which is known for the large tree growing at its centre. “The Yew tree is a symbol of life and death and usually has reddish sap. There is a legend about this particular one that if one is brave enough to slice its bark – it will ‘bleed’”.

The symbolism of the cracked tree mirrors the themes present in Dermot’s music. Lyrics exploring love, pain, healing and growth are reflected through the image of the light escaping from fractures in the bark. Irish mythology also influenced the design through references to the legend of the Children of Lir, which tells the story of four royal children transformed into swans by their jealous stepmother and condemned to live under a curse for 900 years.

“We wove these stories and symbols into the content that lived between the trees. We wanted them to feel ghostly and ethereal as if from a past time,” Zarya said. The approach reflects recurring themes of transformation and the impermanence of nature, set against the permanence of man-made structures such as churches and graveyards that feature prominently throughout the album artwork.

Audiences today expect more from a concert than simply hearing the music. “It’s a very theatrical experience for people, and they look forward to seeing how the music has been translated into physical form and what elements from their artist’s catalogue they can recognise on stage.” By avoiding a hyper-realistic set, the STUFISH team gave themselves the freedom to transform the environment throughout the show. Inspiration drawn from abstract artworks Dermot shared with the team helped shape visuals that aligned with his existing aesthetic preferences.

Creating a set capable of expanding and contracting to suit venues ranging from 2,000 to 20,000 capacity presented a significant technical challenge. To achieve this flexibility, all of the scenery was built from fabric and hand-painted so it could collapse between shows. Constructed by specialist fabrication company Ox Event House, the trees utilised fabric rings at the top and bottom, with stretch fabric painted to replicate bark.

“Instead of trying to make a tree feel exactly like a tree, we wanted to paint them abstractly so that in certain moments of the story, they could look like pillars instead.” 

Each of the 10 trees that make up the set can expand and contract both vertically and horizontally, allowing them to fit into tour transport while adapting to different stage sizes. “Both the trees and the rocks were made with painted fabric, which gave them a very artistic feel, while remaining quite convincing for what they aimed to represent,” Zarya added.

Working closely with video director Glen Leyser enabled the seamless integration of video content into the stage environment. “We wanted to have it live in between the trees so it feels very natural to the environment around it. Because of that, we were able to tell the story and be in many different worlds throughout the show.”

For STUFISH, The Weight of the Woods was about far more than creating a touring stage set. It was about creating a visual reflection of Dermot’s music inspired by Irish landscapes, mythology and architecture to move and breathe throughout his set, telling a story and shifting between moments of intimacy and spectacle. The result is a production that balances technical ingenuity with emotional storytelling, giving audiences not just a concert, but an immersive journey through the world that inspired the album itself.