“Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety” – Antony and Cleopatra, Act II sc. 2
TINA PACKER
September 28, 1938 – January 9, 2026
It is with profound sadness that we announce the passing of Tina Packer, Shakespeare & Company’s Founding Artistic Director and acclaimed director, actor, writer, and teacher.
Tina co-founded Shakespeare & Company in 1978 along with a cadre of theater artists, served as its Artistic Director until 2009, and continued to direct, teach, and advocate for the Company until her passing. Her indelible creativity will be carried forward by countless artists, students, colleagues, admirers, and friends, and her influence on the world of Shakespeare will be enduring.
Our hearts are heavy with the loss of Tina; she was a fiery force of nature with an indomitable spirit. Tina affected everyone she encountered with her warmth, generosity, wit, and insatiable curiosity. She delighted in people’s stories, and reached into their hearts with tender humanity. The world was her stage, and she furthered the Berkshires as a destination for the imagination. Tina had so much life in her that it’s hard to think of it going anywhere, but to be held in all of us. –Artistic Director Allyn Burrows
A Celebration of Life will be held on Sunday, May 31 at 1 pm at the Shakespeare & Company campus.
Details to follow.
The Tina Packer Legacy Fund
In honor of Tina’s extraordinary legacy, we have established The Tina Packer Legacy Fund, which will support the future of Shakespeare & Company and the work she founded.
The Tina Packer Legacy Fund sustains her founding vision of Shakespeare & Company as an integrated program of performance, education, and training that unites rigorous commitment to language with a spirit of artistic inquiry. Established in honor of Tina Packer, whose transatlantic journey and artistic leadership shaped the Company’s distinctive approach, the fund supports the ongoing creation of classical and socially resonant work. By investing in artists, educators, and audiences across generations, the fund ensures that classical theater remains relevant and alive—spoken boldly, lived fully, and made for the world of today. Thank you for holding Tina, her family, and our community in your hearts.
Click here to make a gift in Tina’s memory. In the notes, please write Tina’s Legacy.
Tina Packer—acclaimed actor, director, writer, teacher, and founding artistic director of Shakespeare & Company—passed away on Friday, Jan. 9, 2026, surrounded by her son, Martin, and close friends.
Born in Wolverhampton, England, and raised in Nottingham, Tina was trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, graduating in 1964 with honors and the Ronson Award for Most Promising Actress. She went on to perform as an Associate Artist at the Royal Shakespeare Company and appeared in multiple television series for the BBC and ITV, including David Copperfield and Doctor Who, as well as the 1967 film Two a Penny.
Tina believed in speaking the truth through Shakespeare’s text. She moved on from television acting to direct and teach at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art and, having been awarded a Ford Foundation Travel and Study Grant to research the visceral roots of Shakespeare’s plays, traveled to India, Israel, Italy, and the United States.
There, she co-founded Shakespeare & Company in 1978 in the Berkshires of Massachusetts with actor, director, writer, and teacher Dennis Krausnick (1942–2018), who later became Tina’s husband; renowned voice and text teacher Kristin Linklater (1936–2020), and a cadre of theater artists. The Mount, Edith Wharton’s home in Lenox, Mass., served as the Company’s first venue.
Holding to the idea that Shakespeare’s language offers actors a valuable combination of practices that focus on the voice, body, mind, soul, and spirit, Tina and Kristin started Shakespeare & Company’s Training Program—now known as the Center for Actor Training—to train actors in classical performance. This training introduced a common language the Company could embrace and a practice of work that has a lifelong effect. The program evolved, blossomed into an internationally acclaimed entity, and became Tina’s pride and joy.
Today, Shakespeare & Company continues to offer performance, education, and actor-training opportunities year-round from its permanent home: a 30-acre parcel on Kemble Street in historic Lenox, Mass.
Tina retired as artistic director in 2009, when her focus turned largely to directing and teaching. She continued to act, with theater acting credits including Shirley Valentine, by Willy Russell, a two-year stretch that played in Lenox, Boston, and Louisville; Molly Ivins: Red Hot Patriot, by Margaret Engel and Allison Engel; The Beauty Queen of Leenane, by Martin McDonagh, and Mother of the Maid, by Jane Anderson (Shakespeare & Company). She portrayed Edith Wharton on several occasions, as well as Shakespeare’s Volumnia, Gertrude, and Cleopatra.
Ultimately, Tina acted in eight of Shakespeare’s plays—never when directing, she was sure to note—and directed all of them, many multiple times.
Beyond Shakespeare & Company, Tina directed Shakespeare productions around the world, most recently Titus Andronicus in 2022 at Portland Playhouse in Portland, Ore., as well as at Boston’s Actors’ Shakespeare Project, Prague Shakespeare, the American Shakespeare Center in Staunton, Va., the Los Angeles Women’s Shakespeare Festival, and many others.
Additional credits include John L. Balderston’s Berkeley Square; Tom Kempinski’s Duet for One (Boston Center for the Arts); Marisha Chamberlain’s Scheherazade (Canadian Stage Company); and Molière’s The Learned Ladies at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.
A consummate academic, Tina taught the entire Shakespeare canon at more than 30 colleges and universities, including Harvard University, MIT, and New York University. At Columbia University, she taught in the MBA program for four years and co-authored Power Plays: Shakespeare’s Lessons in Leadership and Management with Columbia Business School Professor John O. Whitney, published by Simon & Schuster.
She went on to pen several more books and scholarly articles, including the children’s book Tales from Shakespeare for Scholastic, recipient of the Parents’ Choice Gold Medal Award. Shakespeare & Company: When Action Is Eloquence, co-written with Bella Merlin, provides the first comprehensive insight into the Company, published by Routledge.
Tina’s book Women of Will, published by Knopf in 2015, was named a New York Times Editors’ Choice. It grew from a passion that took root decades earlier: an examination of the women of Shakespeare’s works through a series of performances, in which Tina portrayed every female role and delivered short lectures for each segment.
In 1994, Tina was awarded Guggenheim and Bunting Fellowships to fund the project and performed Women of Will in Mexico, England, The Hague, China, and across the United States, marking her New York acting and writing debuts.
Thirty years later, the Women of Will Directing Fellowship, conceived by actor and Shakespeare & Company Center for Actor Training alumnus John Douglas Thompson, was created in Tina’s honor to further the development of early-career stage directors who identify as women and have a passion for Shakespeare.
Throughout her career, Tina was the subject of several books, documentaries, articles, and interviews. In 1985, The Company She Keeps: Tina Packer Builds a Theater by Helen Epstein offered the first in-depth look at Shakespeare & Company in its early years and was published by Plunkett Lake Press. She was also the subject of the WGBH documentary Sex, Violence and Poetry: A Portrait of Tina Packer and, in 2013, was interviewed by Charlie Rose on the topic of Shakespeare’s female characters.
In 2024, Shakespeare in the Theatre: Tina Packer by Katharine Goodland was published by Bloomsbury Arden as part of its Shakespeare in the Theatre series, detailing Tina’s directing work. She was the first woman to be profiled in the series.
Tina was the recipient of six honorary degrees, including from Emerson College (Boston), Trinity College (Hartford, Conn.), and the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts (North Adams, Mass.), as well as numerous awards, including the Shakespeare Theatre Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award; the American Shakespeare Center’s Burbage Award for lifetime service to the international Shakespearean theater community; the Elliot Norton Award for Lifetime Achievement; the Gold Medal Award for the Arts from the National Arts Club, and the Commonwealth Award for the Arts (1999–2000), Massachusetts’ highest cultural honor—among many other accolades spanning six decades.
Tina is survived by her son, Martin Jason Asprey; brothers Julian Packer (wife Sue Packer) and Nicholas Packer; aunt Pauline Perry; cousin Simon Perry; nephew Francis Hanson; grand-nephew Samuel Hanson, and many nieces and nephews who will deeply miss Tina’s irreverent and indefatigable spirit and all-encompassing love.
In honor of Tina’s extraordinary legacy, a Celebration of Life will take place on Sunday, May 31, at the Shakespeare & Company campus, with details to follow.
Shakespeare & Company has also established the Tina Packer Legacy Fund, which will support the future of the Company and the work she founded. In lieu of flowers, Tina’s family asks that friends show their support by donating to the fund.
Those wishing to share a memory, story, or reflection about Tina are invited to email rememberingtina@shakespeare.org.
