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 theater. 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: Coed 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 gapping. The chatter down the row of mirrors is just as uninhibited.

[“Hadestown” triumphs at the 2019 Tony Awards.]

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.