At one end of the room a heavy curtain framed a stage; at the other end a balcony glowed with a string of Christmas lights.
A cartoon-like traditional theatrical proscenium arch, complete with scrolls, pillars and an imperial coat of arms surrounded by unfurled flags, frames a stage whose space is literally filled with a giant fleshy, naked female bottom.
"I included her here because her drawings are framed by a stage setup," Ms. Maki said.
As for his directing style, Grandage opts for still, fixed cameras, which adds to the sense that he is more comfortable framing to a stage.
Costa's patient, oblique framing gives Straub a stage on which to declaim his conjoined ideals of "theatrical abstraction" and political revolution, yet also keeps close watch on the practicalities of editorial decision-making, about which the pair are uniquely articulate.
Tom Piper's set design emphasises theatricality rather than realism, with a stage framed by a plush red curtain, exposed lighting rigs and a flimsy painted backcloth.
A hundred or so yards away, on a stage framed by an immense, circular proscenium arch, Neil Young was doing his sound check: two songs with his band Crazy Horse, one with just his own guitar.
The scenes in my real life played out in my head as stories told on a stage framed by a spotlight — each beat followed by a comforting blanket of laughs from a sympathetic audience.
And that is somewhat the effect of the dancing, which pours out onto a stage framed by the musicians, Zuill Bailey on cello and Robert Koenig on piano, with quietly shifting blocks of rectangular dark and light providing smaller frames for the solos, duet, trio and full-company section that make up the piece.
On a stage framed by curtains of a Valentine's Day red, against an equally red map of the 48 continental states and what seemed like a life-sized Statue of Liberty, the conservative stars paced and preached a gospel of radical self-reliance and self-reckoning moral rigor.
