Author Description

This delightful collection is the only work to bring together first-hand stories from Canada's acting community. Funny, shocking, embarrassing and poignant, these are the stories that actors tell each other, providing an intimate glance into the world behind the camera and beyond the footlights. Arranged thematically, it starts with "The Audition", a chapter that focuses on one of the more humiliating experiences that all actors must face. Among the many stories is one by Patrick McKenna called "Dead Man Dancing" that relates a disastrous audition and amply shows why one of the two Gemini awards he won this year was for comedy. Othe chapters look at mentors, directors and producers, working with kids and animals, missed cues and lines, touring, audiences and fans, pranks and escapades, and live radio and TV performances. "Big Wigs and Legends" contains anecdotes starring names like Paul Newman, Henry Fonda, Sir John Gielgud, Julie Andrews, Vanessa Redgrave, Steven Speilberg, Richard Burton, Barbra Striesand, Laurence Olivier, and Katherine Hepburn. Included are many stories from the Stratford Festival: Scott Wentworth cracking up during Richard III, an actor on stage catching fire during a production of Othello and William Hutt's dying in an unconventional manner when Christopher Plummer's Hamlet could not get his sword out of the scabbard (Polonius' death did not look accidental). Along the way you'll find "Bare Bods and Bodily Functions", which includes an anecdote by Bruce Greenwood that begins intriguingly "Standing naked in the wings before an entrance...," as well as "Stunts and SFX", which includes Timothy Findley's story from the first season of Stratford in 1953, when he had to make a "ten-foot leap [from the balustrade] through the dark...and not land on Alec Guiness, whose single spotlight was the only light there was." Brought together by two veteran Canadian actors, Standing Naked in the Wings features a star-studded cast giving the performance of their lives.