Olympia Dukakis to Play Prospero for Shakespeare & Company Olympia Dukakis will play a female version of the magician Prospero in a production of "The Tempest" this summer at Shakespeare & Company, based in Lenox, Mass., the theater announced on Tuesday. She will be joined on stage by her brother, Apollo Dukakis, who will play Gonzalo, and Rocco Sisto as Caliban. Tony Simotes, who is in his third year as Shakespeare & Company's artistic director, said in a phone interview that he first met Ms. Dukakis when she taught theater at New York University in the early 70s and that they have remained friends and colleagues ever since. He said he had wanted to cast and direct Ms. Dukakis for many years, recalling her portrayal of a female King Lear at Shakespeare & Company in 1998. "There were modern plays that could work," he said. Because we are both Greek, I wondered if we could do a classical Greek play. Eventually Mr. Simotes and Ms. Dukakis agreed on Prospero and "The Tempest," a play, Mr. Simotes said, "about this force of nature." "If there was anybody in my life that acts as that kind of magician, it is Olympia," he said. It's a character that creates a storm, with concentric circles spinning in on themselves to bring everybody to a point. I knew she could do it. Women have played lead male roles in Shakespeare productions over the years, including Diane Venora as Hamlet at the Public Theater in 1982; Fiona Shaw as Richard II at London's National Theater in 1995; and Seana McKenna as Richard III last year at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival. Helen Mirren played the lead role in Julie Taymor's film version of "The Tempest" last year; in that case the sex of the character, now named Prospera, was changed. Mr. Simotes said it was Ms. Dukakis's wish to play Prospero as a female character, although it was still to be determined if her name would be feminized. No other characters" sex will change. "We're looking at shifting the point of view from the father-daughter relationship to a mother-daughter relationship," he said. "How a daughter argues with her father is different from how she argues with her mother," he added. We haven't started rehearsals so I don't know what we'll discover, but how the family dynamic is played out will shift in the play. "The Tempest" is one of several productions to be presented by Shakespeare & Company for its 35th season, which begins on May 25 and continues through Sept. Among the company's other offerings are a new production of "King Lear," directed by Rebecca Holderness and starring Dennis Krausnick in the title role; and "Satchmo at the Waldorf," a new one-man show about Louis Armstrong starring John Douglas Thompson that was written by Terry Teachout, theater critic for the Wall Street Journal. Mr. Simotes said the company has successfully withered the financial turbulence of recent years, which resulted in layoffs and a restructuring of the theater's business model. He said the company finished in the black last season for the first time in several years.