I had a fairly traditional path for an actor in British theatre.

I trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, did a couple of plays in regional theatre, a cop show for television (where the character I played was simply called “the wife”) and then I went to the Royal Shakespeare Company. It was there I met John Barton, who not only cast me as the Princess of France in Love’s Labors Lost, but also gave me almost daily coaching on how to approach the text and structure of Shakespeare’s Verse. It was a huge moment of recognition for me – that there not only was a form to what Shakespeare wrote, but there was psychological and philosophical information embedded in that form. If the actor held the form she/he/they were able to go much deeper into the content, the emotions have an accuracy and power to make a real impact on the audience.

It was a revelation that changed my life. However, once I got it, I was impatient to explore it to extremes – and John and Peter Hall and John Schlesinger and Clifford Williams and Trever Nunn – (though we only did a workshop production of a Greek play together) while they would have long intellectual discussions with me, didn’t seem particularly interested in visceral exploration, how to get the thought and imagination into the body.

That difference—between intellect and visceral expression—was where my individual journey began.

My determination to find out what the body and voice had to reveal about structure is what led me from acting to directing (so that I had authority in the rehearsal room), and by directing, I started to put together the training I thought necessary for actors to embody the whole of themselves (mind, body, spirit, imagination) in order to explore Shakespeare’s plays on every level and thus manifest all the extremes of human behavior – individual and collective. It became my life’s work. —Tina Packer