staging

Noun

staging (countable and uncountable, plural stagings)

1. A performance of a play.
   • The 1984 premiere production (and, judging from a few reviews, the subsequent stagings) was much more solemn.1988 April 15, S.L. Wisenberg, “On Stage: cartoon characters in a drama of death”, in Chicago Reader
2. The act of adapting a literary work into a play or (more loosely) into a film.
   • As a movie production it beats the book. Colin Campbell is given the credit of having staged the production yet to [sic] one familiar with the book and Beach’s style of description and love of adventure, can readily see that Beach had an important hand in the staging of his novel before the camera.2006, The West in Early Cinema, page 243
   • Akins’s prominence as a playwright would later become significant to Wharton in the staging of her novel The Old Maid.2007, Memorial Boxes and Guarded Interiors, page 49
3. The scenery or organization of the movements of actors onstage or (more loosely) on a film set.
   • The movie's staging has the actors facing forward, as if playing before a live audience, in the style of fifties television situation comedies.2000, America Noir: Underground Writers and Filmmakers of the Postwar Era, page 165
   • This, he argues, was in turn especially strongly shaped by imported British theatre traditions, particularly the use of the proscenium arch stage which was radically different from the open staging of precolonial and early colonial India and produced and emphasis on frontality in theatre...2005, Jen Harvie, Staging the UK, →ISBN, page 161
4. (broadly) The arrangement or layout of something in order to create an impression.
   • Ranging along a continuum of degrees of "realism," each of these tourist sites embraces particular conceptions of animal subjectivity, notions of authenticity, and models of human-animal relationships. Each represents a different relationship to the concept of "situ." The higher the perceived...1999, Jane Desmond, Staging Tourism: Bodies on Display from Waikiki to Sea World, →ISBN
   • Staging often raises the value of a property by reducing the home's flaws, depersonalizing, de-cluttering, cleaning, and making it look its best with furniture placement, lighting, color, and much more.2011, Christine Rae, Jan Saunders Maresh, Home Staging For Dummies, →ISBN
5. The organization of something in order to prepare for or facilitate working with it.
   • Staging Mobilities explores the dynamic process between 'being staged' (as, for example, when traffic lights command us to stop or when timetables organize your route and itineraries) and the "mobile staging" of interacting individuals (as, for example, when we negotiate a passage on the pavement...2013, Ole B. Jensen, Staging Mobilities, →ISBN, page 4
   • Kierkegaard wants his listeners to see Thorvaldsen's statue in the same way that he wants his readers to attend to his writing -- not as an end in itself, but as a staging of desire.2014, Carl S. Hughes, Kierkegaard and the Staging of Desire, →ISBN
6. A structure of posts and boards for supporting workmen, etc., as in building.
   • We spent a lot of time up on the staging of the great furnaces, trying to pick up the tricks of the trade from the taciturn furnacemen who sat around placidly smoking, or chewing twist, and occasionally throwing in more pig iron to the molten white-hot metal.1945 January and February, 'A Former Pupil', “Some Memories of Crewe Works—III”, in Railway Magazine, page 14
   • As was the case with the City & South London, powers were taken to sink shafts from temporary staging in the river, about 240 ft. from the south bank, from which to begin boring the tunnels, and the first pile for the staging was driven on June 18, 1894.1958 August, T. S. Lascelles, “Diamond Jubilee of the Waterloo & City Railway”, in Railway Magazine, page 518
7. The act or process of putting on an event.
   • The item 'event costs' is particularly difficult to break down since the staging of the competitions results in a variety of different expenditures.2004, Holger Preuss -, The Economics of Staging the Olympics, →ISBN
   • The staging of events which aimed to transform the city's public spaces and streets into spectacular urban landscapes for promotional purposes was also pioneered in the late 1920s.2013, Claire Colomb, Staging the New Berlin, →ISBN, page 1948
8. The business of running stagecoaches.
9. The act of journeying in stagecoaches.
10. The classification of a case of a disease, usually a cancer, into its anatomic or prognostic stage, which is a category of severity.
    • By convention, clinical staging should be performed after complete excision of the primary melanoma (including microstaging) and after information about metastases to either regional or distant anatomic sites has been obtained after clinical, radiologic, and laboratory assessment.2013, Frederick L, Greene, David L. Page, & Irvin D. Fleming, AJCC Cancer Staging Manual, →ISBN, page 210
11. (uncountable) An environment for testing that exactly resembles a production environment.
12. (logistics) The process of loading and unloading commercial vehicles.
    • Lost productivity and earning potential: Commercial drivers are paid for their time on the road. If delays occur during staging, both drivers and companies can lose money. Drivers may wait in long lines at warehouses with little direction, resulting in wasted time and lost productivity.2025 August 27, “Beyond the Loading Dock: Optimizing Warehousing and Driver Safety with Altitude”, in Freight Waves, archived from the original on 09 Sep 2025