David Bowie’s 1978 Concert Tour Gets an Immersive New Life in Brett Morgen’s ‘Stage’

David Bowie’s 1978 performances are set to return in a format designed to place audiences inside the concert experience. Director Brett Morgen’s project, titled “Stage,” is scheduled to premiere on February 14, 2027, at Berlin’s Uber Arena, according to Variety. The production will use multiple screens, immersive sound and an elaborate light show to present restored footage from the final London dates of Bowie’s tour. The concerts have remained a notable gap in the singer’s extensive posthumous archive. While fans have been able to see television appearances and scattered live clips, complete footage of his 1970s tours has largely been unavailable. The exception cited by Variety is the 1973 Ziggy Stardust farewell concert, which later received a full release for its 50th anniversary. The 1978 tour drew heavily on “Low” and “Heroes,” the first two albums in Bowie’s so-called Berlin Trilogy. Their angular rock songs and atmospheric instrumentals, shaped in part by Brian Eno’s contributions, made for a challenging set alongside better-known crowd favorites. Bowie also performed songs including “Fame,” “The Jean Genie” and “Rebel Rebel,” as well as nearly half of “The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars,” which he had rarely played live in the years before the tour. The footage was filmed during the tour’s final London dates in July 1978. Bowie had commissioned David Hemmings, the actor and director, to film the shows, but Variety reports that Bowie was dissatisfied with the results and moved on. Morgen has since worked through the archive’s visual material to create the new presentation. Morgen told Variety that the performances show Bowie without one of the carefully constructed characters that had defined earlier periods, including Ziggy Stardust, Halloween Jack and the Thin White Duke. He described the footage as pushing back against the image of Bowie as distant and detached, saying, “There is no mask for this.” The project follows Morgen’s Bowie documentary “Moonage Daydream,” which the publication noted won a Grammy.