Stage skirt

A skirt is a fabric panel hung on the open faces of a stage, hiding the legs, the cable, the cases and the floor underneath. It attaches with hook and loop tape, pins or a clip rail along the deck edge.

It exists for appearance, and appearance is decided by fullness. A flat panel pulled tight across a stage front reads as a shiny sheet and shows every ripple; a skirt gathered with roughly half again to twice its finished width hangs in even pleats and reads as a finished edge. Ordering by linear feet of stage rather than by fabric width is the mistake that produces the first version.

Colour is the other decision, and black is not automatic. Black disappears against a dark room and is the right answer almost always. Against a pale carpet in a bright ballroom it can read as a hole, and a mid-grey or a matching tone sits better.

A skirt also hides things that should not be hidden. Cable runs under a stage still need to be routed and dressed, because the skirt is the thing somebody trips on when they go looking for a power outlet, and the space under a stage is where a fire marshal will look for stored cases.

Staging and rigging — owned inventory, our own crew, and a site survey before anything is specified.

• Stage deck The modular platform a stage is built from — four feet by eight in most of the country, with the height set by the legs rather than by the deck.
• Riser A small raised platform for a specific thing — a drum kit, a camera, a choir, a panel — and almost always the piece that gets left off the drawing.