Take Your Shirt Off and Cry: A Memoir of Near-Fame Experiences,
by Nancy Balbirer
“It is the fall of 1983. I am a freshman drama school student at NYU, sitting rapt with attention as David Mamet, the guest lecturer in our seminar class, expounds on why George Bernard Shaw had his head up his ass.”
So begins Nancy Balbirer’s razor-sharp memoir of an aspiring actor's travails— and she doesn't pull a single comic or brutal punch.
She remembers NYU's dressing room, where an “entire cast of Hamlet gave each other crabs.”
And, in her explanation of her book's title: "You'll be asked to do only two things in every fucking role you ever play: take your shirt off and cry."
And then there's her notorious chapter on rooming with an A-List actress back when they both were on the ropes:
Clue: Rhymes with Banniston.
Balbirer has dirt and chutzpah to spare. Don't hit your next audition without it!
Narrated by the author, one of our best author-narrators yet.
--Willow Pennell
