Deborah Strang in “The Tempest” at A Noise Within (photo by Craig Schwartz)

6. Helen Mirren isn’t the only dame to have taken up Prospero’s—ahem, Prospera’s—staff. In A Noise Within’s current production in Pasadena, Calif., Deborah Strang plays the exiled Duchess of Milan. But Strang isn’t the only one in this group to do the gender switch; Bahni Turpin is playing Prospera in Cornerstone’s “Tempest.” Previous Prosperas have included Olympia Dukakis at Shakespeare & Co. and Demetra Pittman at Oregon Shakespeare Festival.