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Shakespeare & Company
Tina Packer, Artistic Director
Shakespeare & Company was created in 1978 by Tina Packer with the goal of
creating a classical American Shakespeare company of the highest standard
that holds language as the center of the theatrical experience. It is
rooted in the ideals of the Elizabethans: inquiry, passion, love, poetry,
physical prowess, balance, and harmony. Honoring the human being is
fundamental to this aesthetic, and finding the regenerative moment in
acting and teaching are the skills demanded of its company members.
Artistic Director Tina Packer is one of the country's foremost experts on
Shakespeare and theater arts. Shakespeare & Company, now in its 22nd season
as one of the largest and most acclaimed Shakespeare festivals in North
America, is located on novelist Edith Wharton's turn of the century estate,
The Mount in Lenox (Massachusetts). During its 1999 season, which runs May
28 through October 31, Shakespeare & Company will produce twelve plays on
five stages. Born in England, Tina Packer trained at the Royal Academy of
Dramatic Art, was an Associate Artist with the Royal Shakespeare Company
and performed in the West End and in more than twenty production s for BBC
and ITV television. She received the 1992 and 1996 Elliot Norton awards,
the Guggenheim and Bunting Fellowships for her own performance piece, Women
of Will, which explores Shakespeare's women, and most recently, the state's
highest cultural recognition, the Commonwealth Award. Ms. Packer is the
subject of Helen Epstein's biography, The Companies She Keeps, and the WGBH
film Sex, Violence & Poetry: A Portrait of Tina Packer. She is currently
co-authoring a book, with the working title Shakespeare on Leadership, to
be published by Simon & Schuster in early 2000.