Inside Bad Bunny’s historic Super Bowl halftime show

every time Its history goes back nearly 60 years, making it Super Bowl The halftime show gets tougher. Sometimes the logistics are complicated by concerns about them Grass protection. On other occasions, some aspects of the show leak online, e.g It happened last year before Kendrick Lamar performance. In the period before Bad bunnyAt the Super Bowl LX performance, I wondered if there were concerns about the prospect Immigration and customs Big Game’s (ICE) agents will be the biggest obstacle to the King of Latin Trap.

It wasn’t. He was trying to fulfill Bad Bunny’s wish to turn the field at Levi’s Stadium into his home in Puerto Rico.

That was Bruce and Shelley Rodgers’ problem to solve. their company, Tribe Companyhas been producing the show for nearly two decades, and the pair have become de facto experts at how to deliver increasingly elaborate theatrics during the allotted 26 minutes or so of a halftime show.

For Sunday’s performance, which fell in the middle of the Seattle Seahawks’ rematch against the New England Patriots, the case was gardening. Bad Bunny, whose real name is Benito Antonio Martinez Ocasio, wanted his show to have the same look and feel as his recent residency in Puerto Rico, which covered the stages with palm trees and sugar cane to recreate the surroundings of Vega Baja, where he grew up.

In a different stadium, this can be done by rolling carts covered with these plants onto the field. But Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara uses natural grass; the National Football LeagueThe game guidelines do not allow for that many carts on the field, as they could tear up the grass. The maximum a team could use was 25, and they needed these items for stages and other props.

Bruce Rodgers’ solution was simple: dress people like plants.

As viewers saw at halftime, Bad Bunny, who performed in an all-white outfit bearing a number and the word “Ocasio” on the back like a football jersey, was able to dance around the location he wanted — the casita, the vintage truck, the wedding stage — but the plants were alive in a way he might not have imagined. About 380 people wore costumes that made them look like long stalks of grass. If you’re wondering, palm trees and fixed poles were put up in the same way as street lamps Lamar street scene From Super Bowl Lakes. On Sunday, they reached the maximum permitted number of 25 vehicles equipped with what is called “Grass tires“And I got everything safely on and off the field.