Bruce Rodgers Designs the Super Bowl Halftime Stage
Bruce Rodgers has been the set production designer for the Super Bowl halftime show since 2007, turning artists’ ideas into the stages watched by more than 100 million viewers. Months before Prince’s 2007 performance Rodgers pushed to keep the stage sparse so the artist could dominate the stadium; in 2023 he persuaded Rihanna’s team to use floating platforms to protect a delicate grass field.
Colleagues describe him as the show’s glue, and Jesse Collins said, "Bruce makes the impossible possible." His 20th Super Bowl production will be headlined by Bad Bunny in Santa Clara. The halftime show comes with strict constraints: the stage must be assembled in about eight minutes on rolling carts with pneumatic tires, the field can hold only so much additional weight, and the set must be removed quickly after a roughly 12-minute performance.
Rodgers often asks artists to adjust or scale back ambitions while preserving their core vision.