Shenston Grant spent nearly 20 years on Broadway national tours, and he kept the stories. Thousands of them. Now they are in a book. Remember…I’ve Seen You Naked: A Backstage Memoir gathers the hilarious, outrageous, and deeply personal moments that happened in dressing rooms, on tour buses, and in hotels after the curtain came down at more than 100 cities across roughly 5,000 performances.
Grant worked behind the scenes on productions including The Phantom of the Opera, RENT, Dreamgirls, Cinderella, Jekyll & Hyde, Footloose, My Fair Lady, Grease, State Fair, Beauty and the Beast, and Little Women. He served as Associate Hair and Wig Designer for the Lincoln Center Theater production of The Light in the Piazza and spent two years as personal makeup artist to Eartha Kitt.
His honors include Best Actor in a Musical and two Best Set Design awards from the Columbia Theatre Arts Council, plus a Judge’s Favorite award for float design.
The memoir arrives from an author who was part of the touring company rather than a visitor taking notes. He worked eight shows a week, moved from city to city, lived out of hotels, and partied with cast and crew. What separates this Broadway tour memoir from most show-business books is the vantage point. Grant did not interview his subjects. He was there when the performing stopped and people went back to being themselves.
“I spent nearly 20 years backstage on Broadway national tours, collecting thousands of stories that were never meant to leave the dressing room,” Grant said. “Some are hilarious, some outrageous, some deeply personal, and some involve people I probably shouldn’t have had sex with. I didn’t interview these people. I was there. Reading Remember… I’ve Seen You Naked is like having a cocktail with a very scandalous friend.”
The 100+ photographs may document the tours, but the book tells what happened when the camera wasn’t around. Over nearly two decades on the road—roughly 5,000 performances across more than 100 cities—Grant accumulated the stories people remembered, the stories people forgot, and a few they probably hoped he had forgotten. Remember… I’ve Seen You Naked is about what happens after the show—when the curtain comes down, the theater goes dark, and people exit the stage door and become disastrously human.
Grant began writing the book after an injury forced him to step away from the career he had known for decades. For the first time, he had the opportunity to put nearly two decades of backstage memories on paper—not as an outsider looking in, but as someone who had lived them night after night.
The result is a candid, frequently outrageous and deeply personal account of touring life from someone who spent years on the other side of the curtain—Broadway after the makeup comes off, the costumes are hung up, and the carefully polished world audiences see onstage gives way to the considerably messier life behind it.