Community Access to the Arts Spring Benefit

The Berkshires have become synonymous with "culture," but it's not just the world class museums, concerts and plays that define the county. It's organizations like Community Access to the Arts (CATA), which was founded in 1993, to nurture and celebrate the creativity of people with disabilities through shared experiences in the visual and performing arts. Annually serving over 600 people with disabilities in 30 therapeutic, educational and community settings, CATA participants know how to put on a great show, which they did on May 14 at the Founders' Theatre at Shakespeare & Company in Lenox. A standing-room only crowd cheered as CATA members put on an amusing and inspiring show called Going Places, which was followed by supper in a tent on the Shakespeare & Company campus.

Gala chair Robin Ban who owns Seeds in Great Barrington with Diane Pearlman of the Berkshire Film and Media Commission; Hope Goldsmith and CATA development director Liana Toscanini.

Peter, Gussie & Sam Greer; jewelry designer Stephanie Iverson, writer Paige Smith Orloff and Colin Mathews of readMedia.

CATA board member Nancy Kalodner with Annie Selke of Pine Cone Hill and CATA board member Liz Williams, who was one of the evening's major underwriters.

Paul & Margaret Lindemaier of Berkshire Country Day School with Barbara Zheutlin of Berkshire Grown; Pie Contest in a Box creator Gina Hyams with lawyers Vicki Bonnington & David Schecker.