Tina Packer Builds A Theater


Book Description

Anyone interested in theater should read this small, engaging biography about a woman who founded a regional theater. Tina Packer began as a young actress from Nottingham, England who emigrated to the United States in the early 1970s and, with Kristin Linklater and Dennis Krausnick, developed her own company in Edith Wharton’s abandoned mansion in Massachusetts. The book moves from her early years in Paris and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts to New York and the Berkshires, whereShakespeare & Company has become a major arts institution. Recommended for theatergoers and students of drama and arts administration.




Shakespeare in the Theatre: Tina Packer


Book Description

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.




Shakespeare & Company


Book Description

Shakespeare Company: When Action is Eloquence is the first comprehensive insight into this internationally acclaimed company founded in 1978 in Lenox, Massachusetts, by actor-director Tina Packer and voice pioneer Kristin Linklater, with the transformative power of Shakespeare’s language at its heart. Why act Shakespeare? What’s his relevance in the twenty-first century? Compelling answers to these questions lie at the center of this highly accessible journey into Shakespeare & Company’s aesthetics and practice. Drawing on hitherto unpublished material – including notebooks, lectures, interviews, rehearsal diaries – and the Company’s newly collated archive, this book provides insight into a working theatre company and sheds light on the role Shakespeare plays in our modern world. It also details: Shakespeare Company’s founding and early history, Its aesthetic based on the Elizabethan theatre’s principles of the Art of Rhetoric; Structure of the Verse; Voice and Movement; Clown; Fight; and Actor/Audience Relationship, Vocational components of its Training, Intensives, Practical pedagogy of its Educatio programs, Insights into its unique approaches to Performance, Impact and legacy of its three lifetime founding members: Dennis Krausnick (Director of Training), Kevin G. Coleman (Director of Education) and Tina Packer (founding artistic director). Actors, directors, students, educators, scholars and theatre-lovers alike will find practical acting strategies, inspirational approaches to theatre making and lively insights into the sustaining of a unique and robust theatre company that has been thriving for over 40 years.




Women of Will


Book Description

Women of Will is a fierce and funny exploration of Shakespeare’s understanding of the feminine. Tina Packer, one of our foremost Shakespeare experts, shows that Shakespeare began, in his early comedies, by writing women as shrews to be tamed or as sweet little things with no independence of thought. The women of the history plays are much more interesting, beginning with Joan of Arc. Then, with the extraordinary Juliet, there is a dramatic shift: suddenly Shakespeare’s women have depth, motivation, and understanding of life more than equal to that of the men. As Shakespeare ceases to write women as predictable caricatures and starts writing them from the inside, his women become as dimensional, spirited, spiritual, active, and sexual as any of his male characters. Wondering if Shakespeare had fallen in love (Packer considers with whom, and what she may have been like), the author observes that from Juliet on, Shakespeare’s characters demonstrate that when women and men are equal in status and passion, they can—and do—change the world.




The Shakespeare & Company Actor Training Experience


Book Description

Insights and wisdom from one of America's leading Shakespearean actors and theatrical trainers on how to explore and utilize Shakespeare's work to bring your innate acting talent to surface. When each word becomes an experience, you become a better actor. For the story of how Tina Packer came to the United States and started Shakespeare & Company in Lenox, Massachusetts, read Tina Packer Builds A Theater




New England's Notable Women


Book Description

New England has nurtured countless women who shook off traditional gender roles to forge their own destinies. Their achievements are legion. Narragansett tribal historian Princess Red Wing served as a delegate to the United Nations and co-founded Rhode Island’s Tomaquag Museum. Boston iconoclast Isabella Stewart Gardner had the acute artistic vision to establish the museum that bears her name. Harriet Beecher Stowe ignited public opinion against slavery, arguably hastening the Civil War, as displays in her Hartford home make clear. Pioneering naturalist Rachel Carson jumpstarted the modern environmental movement with her writings about the rocky beaches and quivering tidepools of Southport, Maine. New England's Notable Women shines the spotlight on 45 of these trailblazers and achievers and directs readers to the homes and sites throughout New England where their stories come to life.




Directing Shakespeare in America


Book Description

This unique and comprehensive study reviews the practice of leading American directors of Shakespeare from the late nineteenth to the end of the twentieth century. Charles Ney examines rehearsal and production records, as well as evidence from diaries, letters, autobiographies, reviews and photographs to consider each director's point of view when approaching Shakespeare and the differing directorial tools and techniques employed in significant productions in their careers. Directors covered include Augustin Daly, David Belasco, Arthur Hopkins, Orson Welles, Margaret Webster, B. Iden Payne, Angus Bowmer, Craig Noel, Jack O'Brien, Tyronne Guthrie, John Houseman, Allen Fletcher, Michael Kahn, Gerald Freedman, Joseph Papp, Stuart Vaughan, A. J. Antoon, JoAnne Akalaitis, Paul Barry, Tina Packer, Barbara Gaines, William Ball, Liviu Ciulei, Garland Wright, Mark Lamos, Ellis Rabb and Julie Taymor. Directing Shakespeare in America: Historical Perspectives offers readers an understanding of the context from which contemporary practitioners operate, the aesthetic philosophies to which they subscribe and a description of their rehearsal methods.




The Body Keeps the Score


Book Description

Originally published by Viking Penguin, 2014.




Colorblind Shakespeare


Book Description

The systematic practice of non-traditional or "colorblind" casting began with Joseph Papp's New York Shakespeare Festival in the 1950s. Although colorblind casting has been practiced for half a century now, it still inspires vehement controversy and debate. This collection of fourteen original essays explores both the production history of colorblind casting in cultural terms and the theoretical implications of this practice for reading Shakespeare in a contemporary context.




Kristin Linklater


Book Description

Kristin Linklater is one of the most internationally recognised names in the field of voice training, and this volume explores her work and life while also putting her work into practice. Charting the development of Linklater's process, including her work at LAMDA, the Lincoln Centre, NYU, Columbia, and the KLVC on Orkney, the book provides a comprehensive overview of one of the world’s leading voice coaches. This book contains: A detailed biography of Linklater’s life, including her work with Iris Warren at LAMDA, as well as the founding of her own companies and the KLVC on Orkney Detailed analysis of her key text, Freeing the Natural Voice, and her work with Carol Gilligan on The Company of Women, an all-female Shakespeare company they co-conceived A comprehensive set of exercises – several of these previously unpublished This book offers essential reading and an invaluable practice handbook to the contemporary performer, voice teacher, and actor trainer. As a first step towards critical understanding, and as an initial exploration before going on to further, primary research, Routledge Performance Practitioners offer unbeatable value for today’s student.




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