Picture this. It's your first day at rehearsal and you are pumped to be part of your first production. As soon as you walk on stage, your director shouts, CROSS DOWNSTAGE LEFT!
You're totally stumped. What is cross? What is downstage? My left or the director's left?
Chill out, we are here to help. We need to do just a tiny bit of time travel for this to make sense. Here we are in the Middle Ages.
You'll be learning more about this time period later on in our class. class, but for now, just notice how these stages are set up. Let's take a closer look at this one in the bottom right. That's better? There are lots of interesting things happening in this painting, but we need to focus on just two of them.
The angle of the stage and the angle of the audience. The audience that is watching this performance is all standing on a level surface, like the floor of your classroom. Have you ever tried watching a movie from the back of your class? All your classmates'heads are going to get in your way no matter what you do, right?
This was true for these audience members as well. To make up for the poor sight lines of the audience, these stages were built on an angle. Notice how the back of the stage is higher off the ground than the front of the stage?
This is called a rake. Raked stages are built to slant up from the audience. so that the audience is better able to see the performers.
We still use a rake today, but it's most frequently used for seating nowadays instead of the stage itself. Raked stage are awfully dangerous for performers, but raked seating is quite safe and comfortable for the audience. Raked stages are where our stage direction terminologies begin.
This diagram demonstrates where we get our terms from. The director requested you to cross downstage, remember? According to this diagram, downstage is the area nearest to the audience, because on a raked stage, this is the area that is literally lower to the ground.
This is what our stages look like today, regardless of rake. Downstage is always nearest to the audience, while upstage is always farthest away from the audience. If your director asks you to cross downstage, she's asking you to move, cross, toward the audience, downstage. You're halfway there. Now, to figure out this left and right business, I have great news for you if you're an actor.
Stage left and stage right are always referring to the... actors'left and right sides as they're facing the audience. Here's what those areas of the stage look like.
If your director asks you to go left, you'll end up on the green side of this stage diagram. When we put downstage and upstage with left and right, we end up with nine primary stage areas. Notice that the center is simply called center. Easy enough there, right? It takes some practice.
But stage directions quickly become second nature to actors and technicians working on a production. Think you've got it?