Show dictionary · Production Management
Upstage
Upstage is the area of the stage farthest from the audience. The word is a fossil from raked stages, which sloped upward away from the house; walking upstage once meant literally walking uphill.
In practice
The direction also became a verb: to upstage someone is to pull focus, originally by standing upstage of another actor and forcing them to turn their back on the audience to interact. Modern usage kept the metaphor and dropped the geometry.
On plots and in conversation, upstage combines with left and right (from the performer’s view): "upstage right" places a position precisely without pointing. Banners, backline, and LED walls live upstage; the vocabulary earns its keep the first time someone says "move it upstage two feet" over comms.
How you’ll hear it
"Spike the riser upstage center, tight to the wall."
Related resources
Part of the eventools.io Show Dictionary, a free glossary of live event production terminology.