Staging is the process of selecting, designing, adapting to, or modifying the performance space for a play or film.
Staging is also used to mean the result of this process, in other words the spectacle that a play presents in performance, its visual detail.
Besides costume, any physical object that appears in a play has the potential to become an important dramatic symbol.
While from a critical standpoint, "staging" can refer to the spectacle that a play presents in performance, the term is also frequently used interchangeably with the term "blocking", referring to how the performers are placed and moved around the stage.
When Twentieth Century Fox introduced wide-screen CinemaScope format, the head of production Darryl Zanuck repeatedly reminded his directors to take full advantage of the screen width by staging action all the way across the frame - in his words, 'keep the people spread out'.