About Flats 'N Plats
Flats 'N Plats is a scenic rental shop in Orange County, California, built around one simple idea: small theatre companies deserve real scenery without a scenic-construction budget. We rent modular platform decks, step units, adjustable legs, standard and door-opening flats, jack stands, and casters — all shop-built in-house from lumber and plywood, finished in flat black, and checked over between every run.
Our rental portal is made for the people actually putting a show up: drama teachers, youth-theatre directors, community-theatre producers, and touring crews. You can measure your stage, drop our pieces onto a true-scale 3D planner before you commit a dollar, request a quote straight from that layout, and book by the run with delivery, install, and strike service packages. Schools pay with a purchase order, holds are honored while your paperwork clears, and every estimate is a real conversation with a real shop — not a checkout cart you hope answers email.
Everything you see on stage was designed and built by working scenic carpenters with decades of combined shop and show-floor experience. Every platform that leaves here is one we'd be happy to stand on ourselves. If you need something we don't stock, our custom-build shop will quote and build it.
Teaching the Next Crew
For the past several years, owner Nick Hobson has served as the scenic construction mentor for Newport Harbor High School, Costa Mesa High & Middle School, and Estancia High School. Working alongside each school's theatre teachers, he helps teach students the basics of scenic carpentry — how to measure, cut, join, and build real scenery — and empowers them to build their own school sets with their own hands.
More than the skills, Nick gives students a safe place to learn and grow, and the chance to discover new possibilities for their future. And when they graduate, the guidance continues: former students are hired as freelancers on Flats 'N Plats jobs whenever the work calls for them, so a high-school stagehand can grow into a paid working carpenter.
Nick also co-founded the Technical Artists Collective with colleagues Lissa Slay and Sean Sand — an organization dedicated to helping independent technical artists grow their expertise and build sustainable small businesses of their own.