Is that Sarah Paulson in pajamas brushing her teeth? She is in her dressing room at the Belasco, during the run of the play “Appropriate” — one of some one hundred black-and-white photographs that Jenny Anderson has taken over the past 17 years backstage – during the moments “before a show begins” – that are collected in “The In-Between” (Applause, 144 pages.) Anderson has been a theater lover “since my memories began,” she writes in a short preface. But if she’s loved watching the actors on stage, “I loved the world backstage more,” starting at the age of seven, when she hung out in the wings while her mother was performing in a production of “Annie” in her native Mississippi.

Below are seven of her images from the book, and a video of Anderson explaining the stories behind several other photographs, including the one on the book’s cover of Glenn Close (None of the stories, unfortunately, are in the book.)

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Valerie Harper at the Lyceum before a performance of “Looped,” in 2010

Caissie Levy, Gavin Creel and Will Swenson in rehearsal for Hair in 2010 at the Music Box Theater. “This might be the photo that I feel defines my career, and my place in the community” Anderson says in the video below.

Cherry Jones, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, American Airlines Theater (now Todd Haimes Theater), 2010. Anderson says they connected immediately because of their shared Southern roots, and their mutual interest in photography, especially the work of Southern women photographers during the Depression.

Lauren Blackman, Anastasia, Broadhurst Theater 2018.

Isaac Powell, “West Side Story,” Broadway Theater, 2020

Jordan Fisher and Christiane Noll, at tech for “Dear Evan Hansen” Music Box Theater, 2023

Sarah Paulson, Belasco, 2024