This book studies the connection between feminist performance theory and practice, considering how women directors of Shakespeare in America have recently interpreted and staged female subjectivity and gender, particularly as exhibited in sex relations. Rather than studying twenty or so women directors to assess their general working methods, or two or three to assess their entire careers, the work focuses on eight women and choices they made in specific productions: Jayne Koszyn's and Lisa Wolpe's Romeo and Juliet; Tina Packer's and Ellen O'Brien's Measure for Measure; Abigail Adams's and Melia Bensussen's Twelfth Night; Barbara Gaines's and JoAnne Akalaities' Cymbeline. These directors not infrequently use feminist strategies, but most do so because they are drawing from their own experiences as women and from their familiarity with avant-garde techniques rather than a theoretically informed feminist agenda. Illustrated. Nancy Taylor is the chair of the English and Theatre department at MacMurray College and administers the theatre program, which includes working as the artistic director of Mac-in-a-Box.