Move over, Hamlet, and make way for Kate and Juliet. Actor, dramaturge and Shakespeare aficionado Tina Packer places some of the bard’s most memorable female characters at center stage in her two-part project Women of Will. Staged over consecutive nights, “Force and Heat: The Early Plays” and “Chaos and Redemption: The Later Plays” combine acting and analysis in a study of love, loss, violence and power through Shakespeare’s heroines. Male characters aren’t left waiting in the wings — thespian Nigel Gore plays opposite Packer in the roles of Petruchio and Romeo. The Shakespeare & Company founding artistic director holds court in conjunction with Middlebury College’s exhibition “First Folio! The Book That Gave Us Shakespeare.”
