There was a time when theatre had a particular kind of glamour that had nothing to do with the show itself. It lived backstage — in the smell of greasepaint and cold cream, in the clink of a whisky glass in a dressing room, in the handwritten telegram tucked into a mirror frame on opening night. Some of it was showbiz mythology. Most of it was real. And bit by bit, most of it is fading.

Modern theatre is better in almost every measurable way. Safer, more inclusive, more professional, more sustainable. But something has quietly slipped out of the wings along the way — a set of rituals and small luxuries that gave the industry its particular romance. Here’s what’s disappearing, and why some of it might be worth holding onto.

The Star Dressing Room

There was a time when the number one dressing room meant something. A velvet chair, a proper mirror ringed with bulbs, fresh flowers on opening night, a bottle of something good on the sideboard. Laurence Olivier’s dressing room at the Old Vic was practically a second home. Judi Dench’s at the National still has traces of the tradition. But most modern theatres have quietly rationalised the star dressing room into something functional — a room with a chair, a

mirror, and a kettle. The mystique has been optimised out of it.

Handwritten Opening Night Cards

Every dressing room mirror used to be framed with cards. Cast members wrote to each other. Directors wrote to their leads. Distant colleagues sent telegrams — actual telegrams, delivered by hand — wishing luck for the evening. The cards stayed up for the whole run, layering over each other as the show went on. Today it’s a group text and a couple of emojis. Faster, cheaper, and gone the moment the phone is put down.

Cold Cream and Greasepaint

The smell of a working theatre used to be unmistakable — Leichner sticks, Pond’s cold cream, powder, and the faint tang of sweat under stage lights. Modern makeup is better for skin, faster to apply, and easier to remove. But an entire sensory language has gone with it. Ask any actor over sixty and they’ll tell you: you could smell the theatre before you saw it.

The Post-Show Drink

Not the cast party. The drink. The single whisky in the dressing room after the curtain came down, poured while you were still in half-costume, sipped while you took your makeup off. It was a moment of decompression that belonged to no one but the performer. Modern theatres have alcohol policies, understandable ones, and the ritual has largely moved to the pub across the road. Something is lost in the translation — the pub is a social occasion. The dressing room drink was a private one.

The Cigar in the Producer’s Office

Backstage photographs from the 1940s to the 1970s are full of them. Producers, directors, leading men — cigar in hand, reviewing the take, celebrating a hit, commiserating a flop. The cigar was the punctuation mark at the end of a long day, the physical object that said the work is done, now we sit. It’s a tradition that quietly persists among a certain kind of old-guard theatre person, and for anyone who wants to keep it alive, a proper smoke from a source of high-quality Cuban cigars still marks a hit night better than almost anything else. Slow, unhurried, impossible to rush — the anti-modern gesture in a modern industry.

The Stage Door Encounter

There was a time when the stage door was where the real magic happened. Audiences waited in the cold with programmes in hand. Actors emerged, still buzzing, still slightly in character, and signed programmes with genuine attention. Selfies didn’t exist. The transaction was a conversation, brief but human. Now the stage door is often a scrum of phone cameras, and while the affection is still there on both sides, the intimacy has thinned.

The Green Room That Was Actually Green

The green room used to be a proper room. Sofas, low lighting, tea and biscuits, sometimes a piano in the corner. Cast members lingered between scenes, read the papers, gossiped, ate. Some of the best theatre stories in the world happened in green rooms. Modern green rooms — where they exist at all — tend to be functional break rooms with a fridge, a kettle, and a coffee machine. The lingering culture has largely gone.

The Long Run

Actors used to play a role for a year, sometimes two, sometimes five. They knew the part in their bones. They found new things in it in month eight that they hadn’t seen in month one. Long runs built a kind of depth that short contract cycles simply can’t replicate. Modern producing economics favour shorter runs and rolling casts. It’s practical. It also means fewer performances of the kind that only become possible after 300 shows.

The Written Review That Mattered by Morning

There was a specific ritual on opening night in London and New York: the cast would gather at a restaurant or hotel, and someone — a stage manager, an assistant — would run out at midnight to grab the early edition of the papers. The reviews were read aloud. Fortunes were made or unmade in the next twenty minutes. Today reviews trickle out online across days, algorithmically sorted, endlessly rebuttable. The theatricality of the verdict is gone.

The Backstage Photograph

Not the posed marketing shot. The candid, black-and-white, “someone just happened to have a camera” photograph. A leading lady mid-laugh in her dressing gown. A director slumped in a chair at 2am. A whole cast crammed around a table on opening night. These images defined how the theatre saw itself for most of the 20th century. Everyone has a phone now, and the backstage photograph is everywhere and nowhere — a thousand Instagram stories, none of them destined to be printed and pinned to a rehearsal room wall in 2065.

None of this is an argument for going backwards. The theatre industry has become more humane, more diverse, and more sustainable, and the rituals that have faded were often tied up with hierarchies and habits worth losing. But glamour is a real thing, and it’s worth noticing when it slips away. Some of these traditions — the handwritten card, the ghost light, the slow drink, the cigar at the end of a long night — cost nothing to keep. They’re not about nostalgia. They’re about honouring the strange, unrepeatable act of putting on a show.

The lights still go down. The audience still holds its breath. The rituals that survive are the ones we choose to carry forward.