WOMEN OF WILL | October 13–November 6 | Nora Theatre Company hosts Shakespeare & Company founding artistic director Tina Packer and her main man of Avon. Part lecture, part demonstration, and 20 years in the making, the show traces the development of the feminine in the plays of the Bard. Directed by Eric Tucker and abetted by fellow actor Nigel Gore, Packer intersperses ideas and theories with scenes from the plays, proving in the process that no one can make the Bard more alive and accessible. | Central Square Theater, 450 Mass Ave, Cambridge | $15–$45 | 800.811.4111 or centralsquaretheater.org
OR, | October 14–29 | Daniel Gidron is at the helm of Liz Duffy Adams's mélange of theater history and faux Restoration comedy centered on bawdy doings among seminal female playwright Aphra Behn, actress Nell Gwynne, and England's Charles II shortly after the Puritans were banished and royalty returned to the English throne. | Lyric Stage Company of Boston, 140 Clarendon St, Boston | $25–$56 | 617.585.5678 or lyricstage.com
PETER PAN | October 18–November 4 | J.M. Barrie meets Cirque du Soleil meets CGI in this Threesixty Entertainment extravaganza, which debuted at Kensington Gardens in 2009 and now invades City Hall Plaza. Actors, puppets, spectacular flying, and the imagery generated by 200 computers compete for the attention of 1300 spectators seated under a 100-foot-high tent as the Boy Who Would Not Grow Up meets a technology that has. | City Hall Plaza, Boston | $35–$75 | 888.PPANTIX orwww.peterpantheshow.com
THE DIVINE SISTER | October 21–November 19 | SpeakEasy Stage Company gets into the habit for the Boston premiere of Charles Busch's Off Broadway hit, a mash-up of vintage-celluloid nunnery from The Trouble with Angels to The Sound of Music to Agnes of God. Larry Coen directs Varla Jean Merman, the dazzling alter ego of actor Jeffery Roberson, as Mother Superior. | Calderwood Pavilion at the BCA, 527 Tremont St, Boston | $25–$55 | 617.933.8600 or bostontheatrescene.com
"THE BROTHER/SISTER PLAYS" | October 28–December 3 | Roll over, Molière, tell Shakespeare the news: Tarell Alvin McCraney is the hottest playwright on the planet. The New York Times compares discovering the 30-year-old dramatist to coming upon Eugene O'Neill in the '20s or Sam Shepard in the '60s. Check him out when Company One brings this trilogy by the Yale-educated, Peter Brook-mentored scribe to town. Presented in two parts consisting of In the Red and Brown Water and (on one bill) The Brothers Size and Marcus; or the Secret of Sweet, it's set in the Louisiana bayous and steeped in influences ranging from Yoruba religion to Motown. | Boston Center for the Arts Plaza, 539 Tremont St, Boston | $15–$38; $30-69 for both parts November 13 | 617.933.8600 or bostontheatrescene.com
MABOU MINES DOLLHOUSE | November 1–6 | ArtsEmerson snags this celebrated 2003 production at the tail end of a world tour. Conceived and directed by Lee Breuer, the adaptation of Ibsen's A Doll's House is set inside a cramped Victorian dollhouse in which six-foot-tall women are constricted and dominated by men who are all less than five feet tall. "Ibsen's feminism is metaphorically rendered as a parable of scale." | Cutler Majestic Theatre, 219 Tremont St, Boston | $25–$89 | 617.824.8400 or artsemerson.org
