Tina Packer
British stage director and actress (1938–2026)

Tina Packer
Born(1938-09-28)28 September 1938
Wolverhampton, Staffordshire, England
Died9 January 2026(2026-01-09) (aged 87)
Pittsfield, Massachusetts, U.S.
Alma materRoyal Academy of Dramatic Art
Occupations
Known for
Spouses
Laurie Asprey
​
​
(m. 1962; div. 1980)​
Dennis Krausnick
​
​
(m. 1998; died 2018)​
Children1
AwardsGuggenheim Fellowship (1994)

Christina Packer (28 September 1938 – 9 January 2026) was a British stage director and actress based in the United States. Educated at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, she originally worked as an actress. She starred 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.

Life and career

Christina Packer was born in Wolverhampton on 28 September 1938.[1] She was raised in Nottingham and educated at a Quaker school,[1] as well as West Bridgford Grammar School.[2] She later spent two years in France with an older man she had a relationship with before they broke up.[3][4]

Originally working at a magazine editorial office, she decided to go into acting because "I suppose I'm a natural born exhibitionist."[2] Returning to the United Kingdom, she was educated at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, graduating in 1964 with the Ronson Award for Most Promising Actress.[3] She then worked at the Royal Shakespeare Company, which she had visited while as a youth, as an associate artist.[5] Despite her contract lasting three years, she left early to star in David Copperfield,[4] where she starred as Dora Spenlow.[6] She also appeared in Doctor Who,[3] as well as in the 1967 movie Two a Penny.[7] 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.[3] In 1971, she began work in the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, where she was a stage director and teacher,[8] before she moved to the United States to direct Shakespeare plays.[9]

She started Shakespeare & Company, an experimental Shakespearean theatre company funded by the CBS Foundation and the Ford Foundation in 1974;[10] she named the company after a bookstore of the same name she often visited during her time in Paris.[4] After a poor reception in the United States and depletion of funding, she took a brief hiatus from stage direction.[10] 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.[10][8] She was the founding artistic director of Shakespeare & Company, holding the position until stepping down in 2009.[11]

Her first directed performance for the company had to be done outdoors because the mansion had not been restored yet.[10][8] Despite initial reception being mostly lackluster, it was praised in The Village Voice and became well-known in New York City.[10][8] 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.[12][13] In 1985, a book from Helen Epstein on Packer and the company, Tina Packer Builds A Theater was published,[8] and WGBH-TV aired a documentary centred around her, Sex, Violence and Poetry.[14] In 2008, Anne Fliotsos and Wendy Vierow called her "one of the foremost directors of Shakespeare in the United States".[1] She won the 2019 Shakespeare Theatre Association Lifetime Achievement Award.[15]

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.[16] 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.[16] She was also artistic director of the Boston Shakespeare Company.[3] She has also directed several adaptations of the works of Edith Wharton, who had lived in The Mount herself.[16] She has also done acting in addition to directing, calling directing "such a sedentary occupation".[16]

Packer also worked as a Shakespeare teacher in higher education, including at the Columbia University MBA programme.[8] In 1994, she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship.[17] She also published Power Plays: Shakespeare's Lessons in Leadership and Management (2001),[8] Tales from Shakespeare (2004), literary criticism book Women of Will (2016), and Shakespeare & Company: When Action Is Eloquence (2020).[18]

Relationships

In 1962 she married actor Laurie Asprey[19], with whom she had a son, Shakespeare & Company actor Jason Asprey.[20] The couple separated around the time she left acting, but did not formally divorce until the early-1980s.[3][20] In 1998, she married Dennis Krausnick, a stage acting educator and Shakespeare & Company co-founder; they remained married until his death in 2018.[21][22]

Around the mid 1960s, she resided in Woodthorpe, Nottinghamshire, and later[2] in Stockbridge, Massachusetts.[23]

Death

Packer died, aged 87, on 9 January 2026 at the Berkshire Medical Center.[24]

Filmography

Film

Year Title Role Notes Ref.
1967 Two a Penny Gladys Feature film [25]
1970 Praise Marx and Pass the Ammunition Air Hostess Feature film [26]

Television

Year Title Role Notes Ref.
1964 No Hiding Place Ann Episode: "Real Class" [27]
Thursday Theatre First girl Episode: "Point of Departure" [28]
1965 The Avengers Suzanne (uncredited) Episode: "Dial a Deadly Number" [29]
1966 David Copperfield Dora Spenlow 8 episodes [30]
1968 Doctor Who Anne Travers Serial: The Web of Fear [31]
Boy Meets Girl Sister Tannis March Episode: "The Enchanted Shore" [32]
1972 Crime of Passion [33]
2013 Charlie Rose Self — Guest 1 episode [34]

Awards and nominations

Year Award Result References
1994 Guggenheim Fellowship Won [17]
2019 Shakespeare Theatre Association Lifetime Achievement Award Won [15]

References

  1. ^ a b c Fliotsos & Vierow 2008, p. 329.
  2. ^ a b c "City girl wins top award for acting promise". The Guardian Journal. 16 July 1964. p. 2 – via Newspapers.com.
  3. ^ a b c d e f Fliotsos & Vierow 2008, p. 330.
  4. ^ a b c Harris 2022, p. 57.
  5. ^ Fliotsos & Vierow 2008, p. 329-330.
  6. ^ "David Copperfield (1966) Credits". BFI Screenonline. Retrieved 12 April 2025.
  7. ^ Champion, Lindsay (26 November 2012). "Tina Packer to Take On the Ladies of Shakespeare in Off-Broadway's Women of Will". Broadway.com. Retrieved 12 April 2025.
  8. ^ a b c d e f g Harris 2022, p. 58.
  9. ^ Fliotsos & Vierow 2008, p. 330-331.
  10. ^ a b c d e Fliotsos & Vierow 2008, p. 331.
  11. ^ Harris 2022, p. 57-58.
  12. ^ Fliotsos & Vierow 2008, p. 334.
  13. ^ Merlin, Bella (2 October 2017). Acting: The Basics. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-317-59051-4.
  14. ^ Engstrom, John (24 September 1985). "Documentary on Parker lacks depth she deserves". The Boston Globe. p. 79 – via Newspapers.com.
  15. ^ a b St Clair, Ann (16 February 2019). "Shakespeare & Company's Tina Packer honored with Lifetime Achievement Award". The Berkshire Edge. Retrieved 12 April 2025.
  16. ^ a b c d Fliotsos & Vierow 2008, p. 333.
  17. ^ a b "Tina Packer". John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Retrieved 11 April 2025.
  18. ^ Harris 2022, p. 60.
  19. ^ "FreeBMD Entry Info". www.freebmd.org.uk. Retrieved 12 January 2026.
  20. ^ a b Bass, Milton (12 September 2002). "It's all in the family". The Berkshire Eagle. p. 55 – via Newspapers.com.
  21. ^ "Shakespeare & Company Co-Founder Dennis Krausnick Dies At 76". WBUR. 29 November 2018. Retrieved 12 April 2025.
  22. ^ "Dennis Krausnick Obituary (1942 - 2018) - Lenox, MA - The Berkshire Eagle". Legacy.com. Retrieved 12 April 2025.
  23. ^ "Shakespeare & Company's 2025 Women of Will Directing Fellowship Accepting Applications". Shakespeare & Company. 31 January 2025. Retrieved 12 April 2025.
  24. ^ "Shakespeare & Company co-founder Tina Packer dies at 87". timesunion.com. 10 January 2026. Retrieved 10 January 2026.
  25. ^ "Two a Penny (Original)". British Film Institute Collections Search. Retrieved 10 January 2026.
  26. ^ "Praise Marx and Pass the Ammunition (Original)". British Film Institute Collections Search. Retrieved 10 January 2026.
  27. ^ "Real Class (Original)". British Film Institute Collections Search. Retrieved 10 January 2026.
  28. ^ "Point of Departure (Original)". British Film Institute Collections Search. Retrieved 10 January 2026.
  29. ^ "The Avengers Forever: Dial a Deadly Number". theavengers.tv. Retrieved 10 January 2026.
  30. ^
    • "David Copperfield: 6: The Bachelor Party". BBC Genome. Archived from the original on 30 October 2014. Retrieved 10 January 2026.
    • "David Copperfield: 7: Courtship". BBC Genome. Archived from the original on 30 October 2014. Retrieved 10 January 2026.
    • "David Copperfield: 8: The Proposal". BBC Genome. Archived from the original on 30 October 2014. Retrieved 10 January 2026.
    • "David Copperfield: 9: Domestic Tangles". BBC Genome. Archived from the original on 30 October 2014. Retrieved 10 January 2026.
    • "David Copperfield: 10: Toll of the Sea". BBC Genome. Archived from the original on 27 June 2020. Retrieved 10 January 2026.
    • "David Copperfield: 11: 'umble Aspirations". BBC Genome. Archived from the original on 30 October 2014. Retrieved 10 January 2026.
    • "David Copperfield: 12: Fortunes Restored". BBC Genome. Retrieved 10 January 2026.
    • "David Copperfield: 13: Home at Last". BBC Genome. Retrieved 10 January 2026.
  31. ^ Mulkern, Patrick (6 July 2009). "The Web of Fear ★★★★★". Radio Times. Archived from the original on 1 November 2025. Retrieved 6 October 2025.
  32. ^ "Boy Meets Girl: The Enchanted Shore". BBC Genome. Retrieved 10 January 2026.
  33. ^ "Calling Tina Packer". Sunday Mercury. 21 May 1972. p. 12 – via Newspapers.com.
  34. ^ "Tina Packer". Charlie Rose. Retrieved 10 January 2026.

Sources

  • Fliotsos, Anne; Vierow, Wendy (2008). American Women Stage Directors of the Twentieth Century. University of Illinois Press. ISBN 978-0-252-03226-4.
  • Harris, Patricia (2022). New England's Notable Women: The Stories and Sites of Trailblazers and Achievers. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 978-1-4930-6602-5.
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