Where Words Rule

The summer after 9/11, Tina Packer directed a “Macbeth†tricked out with fog, spooks (the secret-service kind), M-16s, pulsing helicopters, voices without bodies and demented witches wearing lab coats.    

   It was not a  classic “Macbeth.†It was a new “Macbeth,†which is what Packer, the founder and artistic director of Shakespeare & Company, says this theater is about, producing new works, even when some of these new works are 404 years old.

  “I played the porter in that production as a burned-out Vietnam vet with a Cockney accent,†Michael Hammond tells me.    

   Hammond, recently named associate artistic director, is outside the Founders’ Theatre, talking about his boss and about the company. Packer, a small, round, invasive character with a British accent and a majestically brisk air, has been building the institution, choosing plays and directing many of them, raising money, stirring up dreams and training actors, Hammond for one, in Lenox, MA, since 1977.

   Now she is stepping on stage to act. And he is stepping off to direct. And Hammond — a farmer’s son from Miles, Iowa, population 400, who discovered in high school the joy of standing alone on a stage, studied acting at college and in London, worked as a private investigator between theater jobs, and figures he never gained a secure hold on theater until just lately — is directing his first main stage show at Shakespeare & Company. And he is directing Packer in her first, full, starring Shakespeare role for the company.    

   “It’s complicated, as you can imagine,†Hammond says. “I have been her student. She’s been director and I’ve been actor. I have to take my authority more seriously.†    

   It’s complicated for Packer, too.

   In her late 60s, she is playing Cleopatra, the queen of Egypt (who died at 39), a lusty seductress with a yen for power and powerful men. For this role Packer subsisted (unhappily) on Nutrisystem meals (although that crispy white bakery bag she fondled during an early interview may have been contraband), worked out six days a week, twice with a trainer, and dropped 50 pounds.

   She is still small, though, and round, more Puck than Cleopatra, and she is still 60-something.

   Which is why they call it acting.

    “This is what I have to do as an artist,†she says.

   Last year she played Gertrude, Hamlet’s mother, with her son, Jason Asprey, as the prince, and her husband, Dennis Krausnik, Polonius.    

   “The act of doing that made me remember myself 30 years ago.â€

   And the act of performing a single staged reading of “Antony and Cleopatra†at Tanglewood last year churned memories more.

   “She couldn’t let go of the idea of a full production of that play,†Hammond said. “It has something to do with her life cycle. It reawakened her passion for acting and being on stage. And there will never be a better time to do it.â€

   “If I succeed, it will move the company forward,†Packer says.

  If she does not?     

  “I feel very frightened by failure, but that’s part of being in the theater.†  

   And Packer knows a lot about theater and a lot about how she wants it to work.

   “I wanted a company that interacted very intensely with the audience, not like those actors who talk to the middle distance. In Shakespeare’s time, actors talked to the audience all the time, like stand-up comics.â€

   That was just what the hilarious, text-mangling porter in Packer’s “Macbeth†did, who, Hammond says, told the audience, in effect, I don’t get this either, but this is what I think it means. (He stopped the show, a dubious accomplishment in the view of some critics. One said Hammond was “brilliant†but he “ruined the production.â€)

   The idea was to make people laugh. “I want people to think, ‘Oh my God, this is fun,†Packer says. “And I want to make sure the language tells the story.â€

   That last is what Shakespeare & Company lives for, getting the language across. “To persuade,†Packer says, “to influence.â€

   And among her many forcibly defended interests (feminism, for one; democracy for another — within recent weeks she became an American citizen) is the idea that leaders must reach people with words.

   “You can’t have a democracy if people don’t know how to discuss things.â€

   For Packer, these plays say leaders must make smart and compelling arguments. And they say those they lead must demand the same.

   “Antony and Cleopatra,†a play about power, opens at Shakespeare & Company in Lenox, MA, July 27 and runs through Sept. 2. For tickets,telephone 413-637-3353, or go to www.shakepeare.org.