There is a long history of radical Shakespeare productions. Along with the often-annoying, high-concept Macbeths in Nazi costumes or Julius Caesars à la South American dictators (the kind of thing the old movie The Goodbye Girl had such fun with as Richard Dreyfuss played a gay Richard III), there are also actor-driven experiments when a major performer who is otherwise unsuited for a role as it's written doesn't want to miss a chance at it: Patrick Stewart playing Othello in a color-reverse production (everybody else was black), or Pat Carroll playing Falstaff. This tradition goes back to Sarah Bernhardt's gender-bending Hamlet, and Blair Brown is now about to take a swing at The Tempest.

On Feb. 11, Brown will take the stage at McCarter Theatre in Princeton to play the leading role in Shakespeare's The Tempest. Prospero, the wizard who rules the magical island, will become Prospera, Miranda's father will become Miranda's mother and, under McCarter artistic director Emily Mann's direction, only the pronouns will have been changed.

Brown has a remarkable run of recent Broadway hits: Copenhagen (for which she won the 2000 Tony Award), James Joyce's The Dead and, surprisingly, Cabaret, her first musical in 20 years. There are still fans out there of her TV series, The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd, which received five Emmy nominations. Brown has also been seen in feature films like Stealing Home and The Astronaut's Wife; her newest film is Dogville, with Nicole Kidman, opening this spring.

Blair Brown: [Mann] and I have known each other a long time and lived parallel lives but we had never worked together. I told her that I wanted to play Lear -- my favorite play and I don't want to miss it -- and when Emily suggested it, I decided the role was still in the future. We decided The Tempest would work, since a mother with a teenage daughter is necessarily younger than a father need be.

BB: It is fascinating -- it opens up the play in ways the author never intended. A mother setting her daughter up for life is a very different thing than a father doing that. It's curious to play a part written for a man without changing anything that is said and done, seeing what recedes and what becomes important. Most parts for women in the classical repertory are all about "Does he love me?," "Why doesn't he love me?," "I don't love him." Male parts deal with power and knowledge. It's interesting -- people think it's a terrible idea initially, but it shakes up the play. I don't want to see another earnest revival of Ibsen, or of Chekhov for $90 a ticket -- no wonder the theater's dying. Don't do it unless you've got a real reason to do it -- I don't want to be in any of those revivals.

BB: Well, I am a feminist, but I long ago gave that up in theatrical terms. It's not the point here. With the Shakespearean roles I've played before -- Ophelia, Portia -- your job is to come in and say what happened to someone else. But at the end of the play Prospera is going back into the world and her every third thought will be toward death. A woman is not the same person after motherhood -- this change doesn't happen to men.

BB: Well, Alonzo becomes Alonza, but the relationship with Caliban is what changes most radically once Prospero is Prospera; he is not physically monstrous -- actually, the actor is very attractive -- which raises the question of what is monstrous: Caliban is, after all, a rapist, and his mother was a witch. Since Caliban raped Miranda, we're on this island with a rapist and the question for a mother is, what is this life for my child? This becomes the motivation.

CP: Isn't a female wizard a witch? Isn't that somehow a different, nastier kind of creature?

BB: The limits of Prospera's magic are interesting; she can conjure up a storm once Lady Fortune sends the ship within her range, but she can't wish them off the island. She can conjure up the illusion of banquets and clothes, but not real ones -- they're wearing rags. In the end, she puts away her obsession, her magic, as an unfair way to manipulate the world.

BB: It wasn't planned, but I went to the auditions and read with the actors trying out for the other roles. It was wonderful to see the actors unfold in relation to each other. And [Mann] and I were -- weirdly -- in complete agreement about each actor.

BB: We decided we would all do the heavy textual work on our own. There was a four-day workshop without table work [when a cast and director sit around a table and discuss interpretations]. We just got up and did it. We never sat down -- we left it to instinct about, for instance, where to stand.

BB: Jess Goldstein is the designer and his idea is that the people from the ship will look gorgeous, as fresh as before the storm. The hard part is what the three of us look like -- no Robinson Crusoe stuff.

BB: We're hoping it will move to New York; the set is being built so it could go. If something works really well, it has a future.

The Tempest, Feb. 11-March 2, $25-$54, McCarter Theatre, 91 University Place, Princeton, N.J., 609-258-2787.