For more than 15 years, the director and actress Tina Packer has been shaping a theater piece about Desdemona, Rosalind, Juliet, Kate and the other female characters in Shakespeare, a population that she estimates is outnumbered more than four to one by men.
Packer, whose extensive resume includes stints at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and Royal Shakespeare Company before founding and serving as Artistic Director of Shakespeare & Company in Lenox, Massachusetts, is considered one of the world’s living experts on the Bard. She has directed almost every work he has written, as well as having performed in many of them.
Packer’s play “Women of Will” is an examination of the women in Shakespeare’s works, in which Packer performs every single female role with co-star Nigel Gore, as well as delivering short lectures on each of the segments in the show.