As visual storytelling presses toward new technological heights, it is worth recalling that some of the oldest and richest tactics of illusion — from the proscenium arches of the Renaissance to the lintels and lightboxes of Robert Wilson — originated onstage. Over the past 20 years, many spatially encompassing and conceptually driven sets have come from the British artist Es Devlin, a stage designer for Adele, The Weeknd and for U2, at the maiden show of The Sphere, Las Vegas’s new 160,000-square-foot dome of LED screen. When no concert screen could impress enough last year, Devlin’s billboard-sized one for Beyoncé delivered like some fulfillment from “2001: A Space Odyssey.” Recessed into the screen’s center, an enormous disc housed strategic elements from the singer’s three-hour video — disco balls, a womb of amniotic fluid, a fembot’s birth canal. Before this ever-changing aperture, Beyoncé emerged between her costume changes, like Christ from the tomb.

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Persons: Robert Wilson —, Es Devlin, Adele, Beyoncé Locations: British