Overview

This book examines the work of acclaimed director Tina Packer, founder of Shakespeare & Company, whose ground-breaking approach to performing Shakespeare has made her company among the most vibrant and enduring Shakespeare theatres in America. Tina Packer directed her first Shakespeare play at London Academy for Music and Dramatic Art in 1971. More than 50 years later she continues to direct and teach at Shakespeare & Company, which she founded in Lenox, Massachusetts in 1978. Drawing on new interviews with the original casts and creative teams as well as Tina Packer herself, this book is the first comprehensive analysis of all of her professional Shakespeare productions in their cultural and historical context. Over a career that spans 5 decades, Packer has directed or acted in virtually all of Shakespeare's plays, along with many other classical and contemporary works. As artistic director she guided her company through times of expansion as well as belt-tightening, driven by her conviction that the purpose of theatre is to heal and that to fulfil that purpose, acting must tell the truth. With in-depth case studies of 12 of her most significant productions, Katharine Goodland offers a clear account of Packer’s work and contribution to Shakespearean theatre in America while illuminating the embedded nature of regional Shakespeare in communities across the United States.

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9781350205710

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Katharine Goodland is Professor of English at the College of Staten Island, City University of New York, USA, and author of Female Mourning and Tragedy in Medieval and Renaissance English Drama (2006; 2016), several articles and reviews on contemporary Shakespeare productions, and editor of A Directory of Shakespeare in Performance in North America (2 vols. 2007; 2011). She serves on the editorial board of SB: The Journal of Early Modern Drama in Performance, and has worked as dramaturge at Shakespeare & Company and Bedlam.

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