Soft goods are every piece of fabric hung over the stage: the house curtain the audience sees first, the travelers that split mid-stage, the legs and borders that mask your rig, and the backdrops, cycs and scrims the light actually plays on. They shape sightlines just as much as the lighting rig does — and they live on the same plot.
The vocabulary
- House / main curtain — the front-of-house tab, usually a heavy red or black velour. Opens on a traveler track, a fly, or in a swag.
- Traveler — a curtain on a track that opens horizontally from centre. Mid-stage travelers split scenes without a fly system.
- Legs — tall, narrow panels at the sides, masking the wings and your booms.
- Borders — short, wide panels overhead, masking the LX bars and the grid.
- Backdrop / cyclorama — the upstage surface. A white or grey cyc is a projection and wash canvas; a black drop swallows light.
- Scrim (gauze) — magic fabric: lit from the front it reads solid, light the scene behind it and it turns transparent.
Materials matter
Wool serge is the workhorse black — matte, heavy, and inherently flame-retardant. Velour is plusher and reads richer under light. Cyc cloth and sharkstooth scrim are woven for even light response. Every piece in a venue must carry a fire rating (DIN 4102 B1 / NFPA 701 or local equivalent) — inspectors do ask, so your paperwork should list it per piece.
In LuminaPlot 2.0 curtains & soft goods are plot elements: drag house tabs, travelers, legs, borders, cyc and scrims onto the drawing, set material, trim, track and fire rating, show travelers open / closed / partial, and print the whole inventory on the soft-goods schedule in the PDF pack.