Are stage directions from the actors or audiences point of view?
Always remember that stage left and right are determined by the actor’s point of view, never the audiences. Upstage is the farthest away and down stage is the front. An easy way to remember this is a long time ago stages used to be at a slant, so up stage was literally upstage. You can continue from there. To upstage left, that would be towards the back left corner of the stage and so on and so forth.
