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The New York Times

“Shakespeare’s Mighty Sorority” by Ben Brantley
“Fashion is hardly the first thing on Tina Packer’s mind in Women of Will her impassioned exploration of Shakespeare’s heroines, which opened Sunday night at the Gym at Judson. Yet even in this month, when designers are strutting their wares on runways all over New York, there’s unlikely to be a more compelling demonstration of how clothes make the woman than the one provided by Ms. Packer, a longtime, multifarious interpreter of Shakespeare.”
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The New York Times2013-03-07T17:40:55-05:00

The New York Times

“Star-Crossed, Tamed or Tragic: A Tour of Shakespeare’s Heroines”
“Riding those words like an expert equestrian in “Women of Will,” directed by Eric Tucker, Ms. Packer becomes the age and shape the character demands she be. You start to understand how barnstorming troupers of previous centuries could tour in Shakespeare in their twilight years without courting derision. Yet Ms. Packer isn’t onstage just to show that she still has the stuff to seduce an audience; she’s as much a professor as she is a performer here.”
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The New York Times2013-02-19T18:28:15-05:00

New York Theatre Review

Tina Packer, lately the artistic director of Shakespeare & Company in MA, offers an evening on Shakespeare’s women. Women of Will, is formatted as a dramatic lecture, but it deflects boredom with a casual tone. The informality makes the audience listeners, not viewers, which is probably the best way to engender enthusiasm for his work.
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New York Theatre Review2016-11-10T13:40:16-05:00

Boston Globe: “Women of Will” “dazzling and illuminating”

The Boston Globe publishes their review of  Women of Will today, and in it Louise Kennedy calls Tina Packer’s work “an intensely theatrical experience”:

“Drawing on her lifetime of acting in and directing Shakespeare’s plays, Packer combines the performance of scenes with the discussion of themes to create a dazzling and illuminating piece of work. For anyone who cares about women, Shakespeare, or especially women in Shakespeare, it’s not to be missed.”

Read the review at Boston.com »
Boston Globe: “Women of Will” “dazzling and illuminating”2013-03-07T17:55:54-05:00

Examiner.com

“Shakespeare & Co’s ‘Women of Will’ Commands Attention in New York Debut ”
“After thrilling New York audiences with the Overview for the past two months, Packer and company will now offer ‘The Complete Journey,’ the complete edition of all five Parts over a period of three days, starting this Friday, April 5. The plays follow Shakespeare chronologically from his earliest works, as Packer outlines his growth and development as a playwright, as well as changing preoccupation with the role of women in his plays, who play ever more powerful roles, for good or ill, in his work.”
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Examiner.com2016-11-10T13:40:16-05:00

Nealspaper.com Review

Original Article

Women of Will — Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival

Book my trip to Lenox, Massachusetts. After seeing, and hearing, the magic Tina Packer, can conjure using primarily language, movement, and attitude, I want to see anything theatrical in which she has a hand, including her work at the seasonal Shakespeare & Company repertory she founded in the Berkshires decades ago.

Luck, and probably the wisdom of artistic director Patrick Mulcahy, brought Packer, in tandem with actor Nigel Gore, to the Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival, where the pair is turning Packer’s show, “Women of Will” into a demonstration, and lesson, of how to maximize the brilliance the Bard provides and make it thrillingly immediate.