Unsurprisingly to anyone who was online this year, one of the most repeated names when the Grammy nominations were announced last week was Charli XCX, whose album, Brat, earned seven nods. The Recording Academy also nominated Charli XCXs creative director, Imogene Strauss, for Best Recording Package (alongside branding agency Special Offer) for the ubiquitous, neon-green artwork of Brat.In addition to her work on Brats packaging, Strauss was integral to translating it to arenas for Sweat, Charli XCXs co-headlining tour with Australian pop artist Troye Sivan. Sweat, which included 22 stops between September 14 and October 23, was the biggest tour yet for both Charli XCX and Sivan, who sold out arenas with as many as 15,000 seats. Per Billboard, the tour brought in $28 million and sold 297,000 tickets to the 22 shows Charli XCX and Sivan played.But arena tours, in all their grandness, can also be quite staid. Strauss, who was the tours creative director, and production director Jonny Kingsbury were tasked with re-creating the messy, sexual, drug-addled nature of Brat and Sivans Something to Give Each Other in venues that also house Disney on Ice. They used set pieces from each artists solo tour, custom-built a transparent catwalk over a tunnel-like cage, and used intricate Steadicam work to make even the nosebleeds feel like they were part of the action.[Photo: Henry Redcliffe]We really wanted to lean into this dark, clubby lighting as the main focus, Strauss says, noting she wanted it to feel like youre in the club with Charli and Troye.When tackling Sweat, Strauss and Kingsbury had the advantage of having worked together on a previous Charli XCX tour in support of 2022s Crash. That tour traveled the world to several theaters and festivals, meaning the venueswith occupancies ranging from 1,000 to 6,000could be widely different. This constrained their show direction: Strauss says they were lucky if the stage was 40-by-20 feet and that their design needed to be consistent enough, but also able to be modified.Sweat was an opportunity to showcase the discipline that Crash taught Strauss and Kingsbury while letting Charli XCX off the leash. The artist has described Crashthe last of five albums she released under a contract with Warners Asylum Recordsas her major label sellout record and the era itself, her main pop girlie moment. The tour, with its colorful lights and massive columns, reflected this commercial image, Kingsbury says.With Crash, we were trying to fit it into the pop star concept that she was pursuing at that time, he says. On Brat, we were unleashed.[Photo: Henry Redcliffe]An arena thats completely different, but also still an arenaFor Sweat, Strauss and Kingsbury faced one new challenge: Meshing Charli XCX and Sivan together into one single show. Neither Strauss nor Kingsbury had worked with Sivan before, but Gordon von Steiner (Sivans creative director) was an old friend of Strausss and an expert in photo and video. Combined with Strausss knack for live shows, the two easily unified their visions.[Von Steiner] was super open to letting me lead on how to turn the things he was thinking visually into a live world, Strauss says. I definitely expected there to be way more friction, and there was none.Sweats stage showed off the synthesis of the two acts. Because both Charlie XCX and Sivan had been touring solo throughout the summer, producers were able to take piece of each set and incorporate it into the show: Sivan lent industrial scaffolding that dominated the stage, while Charli XCX brought a Brat-green drape that she emerged from at the beginning of each show.Simply due to their size, arenas are a challenge for concert production. With Sweat, Strauss and Kingsbury needed to find a way to fill the space with sound and lights without it becoming gaudy. More mega-club, less basketball game. With that, the duo decided to tone down the design.[Photo: Henry Redcliffe]Usually when you go to an arena show, theyre quite bright, and theres one huge set piece in the middle, Strauss says. As Taylor Swift and Sabrina Carpenter toured on rainbow-fied color schemes, Strauss chose to lean into a darker palette. Doing a really dark show in an arena is pretty rare, and something that we really wanted to lean into.Kingsbury, who works with Cour Design, also led the charge on lighting. For Sweat, he used lighting tricks to invoke a smaller, clubby atmosphere. At the top of the show, a strip of lights sat high above the stage. Each time Charli XCX appeared, the lights were lowered closer and closer to the stage. By the time she came out to sing Vroom Vroom,they were just above her head, serving as her main source of light while flashing wildly.Instead of [the stage] feeling 40 feet tall, it suddenly feels 10 feet tall, Kingsbury says. It feels like club lighting in an arena by constantly shrinking the stage.In 15,000-person venues, camera work is also crucial to making an arena tour feel smaller. For fans way up in the balcony, jumbo screens may offer the only clear view of the artist. Many arena tours will use video that is 60-frames-per-second, shares Kingsbury. The Sweat video feed was a clearer 24-frames-per-second, with video shot every night by a Steadicam operator.Because the screens were made to look like billboards, Charli XCX could perform on them, screaming out her lyrics to fans on the far sides of the stage. Shes touching the people in the worst seats in the venue, but they end up being amazing seats for certain moments of the show, Strauss says.[Photo: Henry Redcliffe]Cages, platforms, and other technical odditiesThe tours biggest set piece was the cage, a long, transparent catwalk with a fenced-in layer below it. This underlayer gave Charli XCX and Sivan access to the floor from backstage, letting them get close to standing-room audience members. It also offered the set designers an opportunity to put their twist on a hallmark of the pop-star arena tour.Charli had been pretty adverse to having a catwalk because she felt like it was too pop, Strauss says. Her being on level with the audience, being able to interact with them more eye-to-eye, thats where the idea for the cage came from.[Photo: Henry Redcliffe]Kingsbury embraced the cage for its cinematic possibilities. When Charli XCX and Sivan came together toward the end of the show to sing their 2018 collab 1999, camera operators were able to film both from above and inside the cagewhere Sivan strutted to the end of the catwalk directly underneath Charli XCX. And, after Charli XCX spat on the catwalk during Guess, a camera operator could capture the shot of her licking it up, from below, in closeup.The shows first finale 1999 also had the tours biggest technical feat: A rising platform, lifting the stars up closer to the balcony. Platforms are a staple of arena shows, but aside from being emblazoned with the tour name, the lift moment still avoided maximalism.I wanted things to feel industrial, minimal, but still dynamic, Strauss says. It doesnt have this big poptastic element of, Oh, its a flying saucer! Its just a platform. Its the most minimal it can be, and were not trying to hide that.