Tina Packer Builds a Theater [Paperback]

Helen Epstein (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0961469609 | ISBN-13: 978-0961469603 | Publication Date: June 1985

Anyone interested in theater should read this small, engaging biography about a woman who founded a regional theater. Tina Packer began as a young actress from Nottingham, England who emigrated to the United States in the early 1970s and, with Kristin Linklater and Dennis Krausnick, developed her own company in Edith Wharton’s abandoned mansion in Massachusetts. The book moves from her early years in Paris and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts to New York and the Berkshires, where Shakespeare & Company has become a major arts institution.

Recommended for theatergoers and students of drama and arts administration.

--This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 124 pages
• Publisher: Plunkett Lake Pr (June 1985)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0961469609
• ISBN-13: 978-0961469603
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.8 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,673,680 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Helen Epstein is the author of six books of literary non-fiction including the two memoirs Children of the Holocaust and Where She Came From: A Daughter's Search for her Mother's History and the biography Joe Papp: An American Life. All three books were named New York Times Notable Books of the Year. She is also the translator from the Czech of Acting in Terezin by Vlasta Schonova and the late Heda Margolius Kovaly's classic memoir Under A Cruel Star: A LIfe in Prague 1941-1968.

Her work on Kindle includes Children of the Holocaust; Music Talks: The Lives of Classical Musicians; Joe Papp; Tina Packer Builds a Theater; Meyer Schapiro: Portrait of an Art Historian; Memoir; A Living Will; Training as a Shakespearean Actor (with Tina Packer);and Ice Cream Man (with Gus Rancatore). Her book on memoir, Ecrire La Vie, as well as translations of Where She Came From and Children of the Holocaust are published by La Cause des livres (Paris) and available on amazon.fr.

Born in Prague in 1947, Helen grew up in New York City, where she attended and graduated from Hunter College High School (1965). She became a journalist after the Soviet Invasion of Czechoslovakia of 1968 when her personal account was published in the Jerusalem Post.

In 1971, Helen graduated from the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism and began freelancing for diverse publications including the New York Times where her first Magazine cover story on freelance musician Ed Birdwell ran in 1974. Her profiles of legendary musicians such as Vladimir Horowitz, Leonard Bernstein and Yo-Yo Ma are collected in Music Talks.

She began teaching journalism at New York University in 1974 and became the first woman in the journalism department to be awarded tenure. In 1986, she left NYU to move to the Boston area. She has an active speaking career and has lectured at a wide variety of venues including universities in Europe and North and South America; health organizations; high schools; synagogues, libraries and churches; the United States Military Academy at West Point; the Embassy of the Czech Republic and the U.S. Holocaust Museum. The mother of two grown sons, Helen shuttles between the Berkshires and the Boston area with her husband and blogs about the arts for the New England cultural website The Arts Fuse.

Photos show Helen with late author Heda Kovaly and son Sam, with her Czech researchers Jiri Rychetsky and Jiri Fiedler in 2001; speaking with Jean-Gaspard Palenicek at the Centre Tcheque in Paris; lecturing at SUNY Geneseo; at the El Ateneo bookstore in Buenos Aires; in Rome with her Italian editor Annalisa Cosentino and translator Elisa Renso; and at Freud's birthplace in Pribor, Czech Republic. To see a video interview of Helen, please cut and paste: http://media.uoregon.edu/channel/2007/02/05/uo-today-229-helen-epstein/

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Remarkable woman; very entertaining book, July 5, 2005

By 

C. Montgomery (Queens, New York) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Tina Packer Builds a Theater (Paperback)

I have taken a few workshops with Tina Packer, and was delighted to find this biography (which limits itself mostly to her professional life). Any woman who is thinking about starting a theater company should definitely read this book. Packer's persistence is inspiring, while her many practical struggles (fights for grant money, real estate woes)are alternately funny and cautionary. The book is engaging to read (it indulges in many digressions--like the ghosts in Edith Wharton's home), and valiantly tries to resist worshipping Tina (impossible for anyone who has ever met her). I read the whole thing over a weekend.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A Quick and Easy View of An Amazing Woman, March 17, 2000

By 

Book Addict "Eleanor T" (Pittsburgh, PA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Tina Packer Builds a Theater (Paperback)

Picked this book up at a used bookstore well off the beaten path and had finished it in 48 hours. Its author does not belittle her audience, but also focuses on making the fairly complex world of theatre readable for anyone with an interest. Thoroughly enjoyed it from beginning to end. A great book to read on the train or in rehearsal downtime. Not the most complex book in the world, but definitely worth the read.

4.0 out of 5 stars Shakespeare and Company- a great place to learn, February 6, 2011

By 

Jerry P. Ferraccio (Santa Fe, NM) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Tina Packer Builds A Theater (Kindle Edition)

I worked for Shakespeare and Company from 1999-2000, during their transition from the Mount (Edith Wharton's estate) to their new property on Kemble Street (named for the actress, Fanny Kemble). This book is an inspiration to anyone who supports theatre or has admired Tina's accomplishments.