Tina Packer

{{Infobox person

| birth_date = {{Birth date and age|1938|9|28|df=y}}

| birth_place = Wolverhampton, Staffordshire, England

| alma_mater = Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts

| occupation = Stage director

| spouse = {{plainlist|

{{marriage |Laurie Asprey||1980s|end=div}}
{{marriage |Dennis Krausnick|1998|2018 |end=d.}}

}}

| children = 1

| awards = Guggenheim Fellowship (1994)

}}

Christina Packer (born 28 September 1938) is a British stage director and actress based in the United States. Educated at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, she originally worked as an actress, starring in the BBC television serial David Copperfield. After she quit acting and became a stage director in the United States, she founded the Shakespearean theatre company Shakespeare & Company, serving as its artistic director from its second foundation in 1978 until 2009.

Biography

Christina Packer was born on 28 September 1938 in Wolverhampton.{{sfn|Fliotsos|Vierow|2008|p=329}} She was raised in Nottingham and educated at a Quaker school,{{sfn|Fliotsos|Vierow|2008|p=329}} as well as West Bridgford Grammar School. She later spent two years in France with an older man she had a relationship with, before they broke off.{{sfn|Fliotsos|Vierow|2008|p=330}}{{sfn|Harris|2022|p=57}}

Originally working at a magazine editorial office, she decided to go into acting because "I suppose I'm a natural born exhibitionist." Returning to the United Kingdom, she was educated at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, graduating in 1964 with the Ronson Award for Most Promising Actress.{{sfn|Fliotsos|Vierow|2008|p=330}} She then worked at the Royal Shakespeare Company, which she had visited while as a youth, as an associate artist.{{sfn|Fliotsos|Vierow|2008|p=329-330}} Despite her contract lasting three years, she left early to star in David Copperfield,{{sfn|Harris|2022|p=57}} where she starred as Dora Spenlow.{{Cite web |title=David Copperfield (1966) Credits |url=http://www.screenonline.org.uk/tv/id/1421009/credits.html |access-date=12 April 2025 |website=BFI Screenonline}} She also appeared in Doctor Who,{{sfn|Fliotsos|Vierow|2008|p=330}} as well as in the 1967 movie Two a Penny.{{Cite web |last=Champion |first=Lindsay |date=26 November 2012 |title=Tina Packer to Take On the Ladies of Shakespeare in Off-Broadway's Women of Will |url=https://www.broadway.com/buzz/165740/tina-packer-to-take-on-the-ladies-of-shakespeare-in-off-broadways-women-of-will/ |access-date=12 April 2025 |website=Broadway.com}} However, she felt that she lacked a voice as a performer, and after her scenes in an adaptation of Washington Square were cut from the final broadcast, she quit acting.{{sfn|Fliotsos|Vierow|2008|p=330}} In 1971, she began work in the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, where she was a stage director and teacher,{{sfn|Harris|2022|p=58}} before she moved to the United States to direct Shakespeare plays.{{sfn|Fliotsos|Vierow|2008|p=330-331}}

She started Shakespeare & Company, an experimental Shakespearean theatre company funded by the CBS Foundation and Ford Foundation in 1974;{{sfn|Fliotsos|Vierow|2008|p=331}} she named the company after a bookstore of the same name she often visited during her time in Paris.{{sfn|Harris|2022|p=57}} After a poor reception in the United States and depletion of funding, she took a brief hiatus from stage direction.{{sfn|Fliotsos|Vierow|2008|p=331}} In 1978, she directed Les Femmes Savantes at the Kennedy Center and then restarted Shakespeare & Company at The Mount in Lenox, Massachusetts, wanting a traditional Shakespearean theatre.{{sfn|Fliotsos|Vierow|2008|p=331}}{{sfn|Harris|2022|p=58}} She was the founding artistic director of Shakespeare & Company, holding the position until stepping down in 2009.{{sfn|Harris|2022|p=57-58}}

Her first directed performance for the company had to be done outdoors because the mansion had not been restored yet.{{sfn|Fliotsos|Vierow|2008|p=331}}{{sfn|Harris|2022|p=58}} Despite initial reception being mostly lackluster, it was praised in The Village Voice and became well-known in New York City.{{sfn|Fliotsos|Vierow|2008|p=331}}{{sfn|Harris|2022|p=58}} As a stage director, she has also used color-blind casting in Shakespearean plays, allowing Black and Asian actors to appear in traditionally White roles.{{sfn|Fliotsos|Vierow|2008|p=334}}{{Cite book |last=Merlin |first=Bella |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=DUg4DwAAQBAJ |title=Acting: The Basics|date=2 October 2017 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-317-59051-4 }} In 1985, a book from Helen Epstein on Packer and the company, Tina Packer Builds A Theater was published,{{sfn|Harris|2022|p=58}} and WGBH-TV aired a documentary centered around her, Sex, Violence and Poetry.{{Cite news |last=Engstrom |first=John |date=24 September 1985 |title=Documentary on Parker lacks depth she deserves |url=https://www.newspapers.com/image/441102908/ |work=The Boston Globe |page=79 |via=Newspapers.com}} In 2008, Anne Fliotsos and Wendy Vierow called her "one of the foremost directors of Shakespeare in the United States".{{sfn|Fliotsos|Vierow|2008|p=329}} She won the 2019 Shakespeare Theatre Association Lifetime Achievement Award.{{Cite news |last=St Clair |first=Ann |date=16 February 2019 |title=Shakespeare & Company's Tina Packer honored with Lifetime Achievement Award |url=https://theberkshireedge.com/shakespeare-companys-tina-packer-honored-with-lifetime-achievement-award/ |access-date=12 April 2025 |work=The Berkshire Edge}}

In 1991, she directed a version of Hamlet at North Shore Music Theatre, set in West Africa and performed by a predominantly-Black American cast.{{sfn|Fliotsos|Vierow|2008|p=333}} In 1993, she directed Boston Center for the Arts productions of John L. Balderston's Berkeley Square and Tom Kempinski's Duet for One, as well as a Canadian Stage Company production of Marisha Chamberlain's Scheherazade.{{sfn|Fliotsos|Vierow|2008|p=333}} She was also artistic director of the Boston Shakespeare Company.{{sfn|Fliotsos|Vierow|2008|p=330}} She has also directed several adaptations of the works of Edith Wharton, who had lived in The Mount herself.{{sfn|Fliotsos|Vierow|2008|p=333}} She has also done acting in addition to directing, calling directing "such a sedentary occupation".{{sfn|Fliotsos|Vierow|2008|p=333}}

She has also worked as a Shakespeare teacher in higher education, including at the Columbia University MBA programme.{{sfn|Harris|2022|p=58}} In 1994, she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship.{{Cite web |title=Tina Packer |url=https://www.gf.org/fellows/tina-packer/ |access-date=11 April 2025 |website=John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation}} She also published Power Plays: Shakespeare's Lessons in Leadership and Management (2001),{{sfn|Harris|2022|p=58}} Tales from Shakespeare (2004), literary criticism book Women of Will (2016), and Shakespeare & Company: When Action Is Eloquence (2020).{{sfn|Harris|2022|p=60}}

She was married to actor Laurie Asprey, with whom she had a son, Shakespeare & Company actor Jason Asprey.{{Cite news |last=Bass |first=Milton |date=12 September 2002 |title=It's all in the family |url=https://www.newspapers.com/image/533871320/ |work=The Berkshire Eagle |page=55 |via=Newspapers.com}} The couple separated around the time she quit acting, but did not formally divorce until the early-1980s.{{sfn|Fliotsos|Vierow|2008|p=330}} In 1998, she married Dennis Krausnick, a stage acting educator and Shakespeare & Company co-founder; they remained married until his death in 2018.{{Cite web |date=29 November 2018 |title=Shakespeare & Company Co-Founder Dennis Krausnick Dies At 76 |url=https://www.wbur.org/news/2018/11/29/shakespeare-company-co-founder-dennis-krausnick-dies-at-76 |access-date=12 April 2025 |website=WBUR}}{{Cite web |title=Dennis Krausnick Obituary (1942 - 2018) - Lenox, MA - The Berkshire Eagle |url=https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/berkshire/name/dennis-krausnick-obituary?id=9998737 |access-date=12 April 2025 |website=Legacy.com}}

A resident of Woodthorpe, Nottinghamshire, in 1964,{{Cite news |date=16 July 1964 |title=City girl wins top award for acting promise |url=https://www.newspapers.com/image/881001007/ |work=The Guardian Journal |page=2 |via=Newspapers.com}} Packer lives in Stockbridge, Massachusetts.{{Cite web |date=31 January 2025 |title=Shakespeare & Company's 2025 Women of Will Directing Fellowship Accepting Applications |url=https://shakespeare.org/newsroom/2025/01/shakespeare-companys-2025-women-of-will-directing-fellowship-accepting-applications/ |access-date=12 April 2025 |website=Shakespeare & Company}}

References

{{Cite book |last1=Fliotsos |first1=Anne |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=EGOBtC_Jum0C |title=American Women Stage Directors of the Twentieth Century |last2=Vierow |first2=Wendy |publisher=University of Illinois Press |year=2008|isbn=978-0-252-03226-4}}
{{Cite book |last=Harris |first=Patricia |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=rTFxEAAAQBAJ |title=New England's Notable Women: The Stories and Sites of Trailblazers and Achievers |publisher=Rowman & Littlefield |year=2022|isbn=978-1-4930-6602-5}}

Category:1938 births

Category:Living people

Category:Actresses from Nottingham

Category:Actresses from Wolverhampton

Category:People from Gedling (district)

Category:People from Stockbridge, Massachusetts

Category:Actresses from Massachusetts

Category:People educated at West Bridgford School

Category:Alumni of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art

Category:English expatriates in the United States

Category:English theatre directors

Category:English film actresses