For decades, our photographers have gotten intimate access backstage. Peek in as they capture stars, before the show and before the mirror.
What performers take off (and put on), as told in 27 photographs and the words of Jesse Green, co-chief theatre critic for The New York Times. "Some dressing rooms are shrines to self-love," he writes. "More pertinently, they are assembly lines for reinvention."
About the last thing a dressing room is is the room where actors get dressed.
First, it's where they get undressed. It's where, along with extraneous layers of clothing, they remove the extraneous layers of self they bring into the theatre. It's where they take themselves off.
When I used to visit backstages frequently as part of my job, I saw performers in every kind of semi-nudity. It's no different now: Co-ed locker-room shamelessness is the rule. In the long galleys where ensemble members prepare, there's really no choice — no privacy, no modesty. Men parade in their dance belts, and women in silk robes casually gaping. The chatter down the row of mirrors is just as uninhibited.
The cast of A Chorus Line. The Booth Theatre was turned into a makeshift dressing room for the hundreds taking part in the musical's record 3,389th performance. Photo / Fred R. Conrad, New York Times
Sandy Duncan Backstage on opening night for a revival of Peter Pan. She continued playing the boy who wouldn't grow up. September 6, 1979. Photo / Getty Images
Ian McKellen and Jane Seymour The co-stars of Amadeus share an opening-night embrace at the Broadhurst Theatre December 17, 1980. Photo / Marilyn K. Yee, The New York Times
Hugh Panaro The actor prepared to play the title character of The Phantom of the Opera at the Majestic Theatre February 7, 2012. Photo / Sara Krulwich, The New York Times
African-American singer and dancer Josephine Baker performed at Henry Miller's Theatre in a rare return home on April 10, 1964. Photo / John Orris, The New York Times
Al Pacino, who won a Tony Award for The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel, at the Longacre Theatre on April 26, 1977. Photo / Jack Manning, The New York Times
But even in the star quarters, which are rarely as glamorous as one might wish, actors spend less time putting on makeup than scraping off their public personas. One star who invited me to drop by — a soignée veteran of musicals that regularly featured her in sequins — enjoyed her dressing room as a place to release her inner grandma. She wore flowery housecoats and fluffy slippers.
When I followed another into her windowless new palace on the first day of stage rehearsals, she did not quail at its industrial-strength ugliness but did gasp at the floor-to-ceiling mirrors a previous tenant had glued to a wall. She asked her assistant whether they might be ripped down or covered up. A dressing room was no place to see oneself.
Singer and actress Vanessa Williams getting ready for Sondheim on Sondheim at Studio 54 on April 4, 2010. Photo / Chester Higgins Jr, The New York Times
Mary Martin backstage looking through a stack of telegrams congratulating her on the last day of her run in South Pacific on June 2, 1951. Photo / William Eckenberg, The New York Times
Maurice Evans, one of the leading Shakespearean actors of his day. Evans became Falstaff for Henry IV, Part 1 at the St. James Theatre circa January 1939. Photo / William Eckenberg, The New York Times
Sarah Jessica Parker was the third actress to play the red-headed orphan during the original run of Annie at the Alvin Theatre in 1979. Photo / AP
Raul Julia in his dressing room for Nine in 2983, at the 46th Street Theatre, was decorated by the show's set designer, Laurence Miller. Photo / Vic DeLucia, The New York Times
In the Heights, at the Richard Rodgers Theatre in 2008, was the first Broadway show for the composer, lyricist and actor Lin-Manuel Miranda. Photo / Tony Cenicola, The New York Times
Not everyone feels this way. Some dressing rooms are shrines to self-love, certainly. It takes a lot for an actor to throw away flowers dangling notes of praise.
More often, though, dressing rooms are other things: nurseries, clubhouses, makeshift trysting spots. Conference centres for hash-outs with agitated authors. Publicity offices with stacks of photos that still need signing. Impromptu rehearsal studios. Kennels. Napatoriums for two-show days. Ramen kitchens, botánicas, graveyards for humidifiers.
More pertinently, they are assembly lines for reinvention. Even if actors arrive solo, sometimes hours before curtain, they aren't alone for long. Here come the wig handler, the dresser, the sound technician with his condom-wrapped microphone packs. Knock, knock: It's the director's assistant with a performance note. The co-star complaining about last night's stepped-on joke.
But at some point, dressing rooms are places of silent, solitary work. Except for the Elphabas of Wicked, who need mechanical green-spraying, most actors put on their own makeup; it's part of a tradition going back to the ancients. A designer will usually have provided the template; many's the facial diagram I've seen perched on the mirror showing exactly how the transformation should happen.
Alice Ripley. Playing the manic-depressive mother in Next to Normal, at the Booth Theatre in 2009 was a gut-wrenching experience for the actress. Photo / Richard Perry, The New York Times
Mae West, who played the title character of her play Diamond Lil, putting on some prop jewellery in her dressing room circa 1949. Photo / The New York Times
Samuel E. Wright, who originated the role of Mufasa in The Lion King at the New Amsterdam Theatre. Photo / Sara Krulwich, The New York Times
Liza Minnelli, seen here in 1965, made her Broadway debut in Flora, the Red Menace, at the Alvin Theatre. Photo / Meyer Liebowitz, The New York Times
After playing the undead Transylvanian count in Dracula at the Martin Beck Theatre in 1977, Frank Langella took on the same role in the movie version. Nov. 3, 1977. Photo / Jack Mitchell
Idina Menzel spent more than a year playing the original (and green-skinned) Elphaba in Wicked, still running at the Gershwin Theatre. Photo / Sara Krulwich, The New York Times
Paddy Chayefsky's The Passion of Josef D., in which Peter Falk transformed himself into Stalin, lasted just 15 performances at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre in 1963. Photo / The New York Times
The role of Dolly Levi in Hello, Dolly! was originally written for Ethel Merman seen here in 1970. 9 years after turning it down she joined the show at the St. James Theatre. Photo / Neal Boenzi, NYT
David Cassidy and Shaun Cassidy, teen heartthrobs (and half-brothers), performed together as separated-at-birth twins in Blood Brothers, at the Music Box Theatre in 1993. Photo / James Estrin, NYT
Matthew Broderick was a Broadway novice when he starred in Neil Simon's Brighton Beach Memoirs at the Alvin Theatre in 1983. He won a Tony for best featured actor. Photo / Barton Silverman, NY Times
The magic isn't in the mascara. Nor is it to be found, at least not at first, in anything that's added. It's in what's taken away. In front of the dressing room mirror, an actor's own hair will often be secreted in a stocking cap, his 5 o'clock shadow spackled away, her freckles powdered to nothing. Looking at themselves disappearing, they may find their character getting ready to enter.
Later come the costumes and warm-ups, the guests and Champagne — even the press. Here we see how photographers for The New York Times over the years have caught classic performers (and some more recent ones, too, in the same theatres) in the act of becoming someone.
But first, before they can become someone, they have to become no one.
Jake Shears, the former frontman of the glam-rock band Scissor Sisters put on the signature footwear for his role in Kinky Boots at the Al Hirschfeld Theatre in 2018. Photo / Vincent Tullo, NY Times
Gertrude Lawrence is embraced by the producer John Golden backstage on opening night of Skylark in 1939 at the Morosco Theatre. Photo / William Eckenberg, The New York Times
Charles S. Dutton received a Tony nomination for his 1984 performance in Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, which ran at the Cort Theatre. Photo / Larry C. Morris, The New York Times
Ben Platt decompressed backstage at the Music Box Theatre after a performance of the musical Dear Evan Hansen, a month before winning a Tony in 2017. Photo Damon Winter, The New York Times
