The apron is any part of the stage that extends past the proscenium arch and into the audience or seating area. The Elizabethan stage, which was a raised platform with the audience on three sides, is the outstanding example.
Most stages edges are curved slightly outward providing a very small apron. Some have a large playing space protruding into the audience and in turn a very large apron.
An apron stage can also be another name for a thrust stage.
Famous quotes containing the words apron and/or stage:
“Part of a moon was falling down the west,
Dragging the whole sky with it to the hills.
Its light poured softly in her lap. She saw
And spread her apron to it.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“It is a mass language only in the same sense that its baseball slang is born of baseball players. That is, it is a language which is being molded by writers to do delicate things and yet be within the grasp of superficially educated people. It is not a natural growth, much as its proletarian writers would like to think so. But compared with it at its best, English has reached the Alexandrian stage of formalism and decay.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)