Last year at its annual gala, Shakespeare & Company announced that it had reached its $5 million goal for its capital campaign and was now raising the ante to $7.5 million to complete the renovation of an existing building on its campus which is now the Production and Performing Arts Center. On Saturday June 28, the Lenox-based theater troupe announced that it had reached the $7.5 million target, and is now setting a new goal of $10 million by next year. With an anonymous challenge grant of $1 million, the company is on its way to breaking another fundraising record . No wonder spirits were high under the big top on the Shakespeare & Company lawn. where some guests kicked off their shoes and danced barefoot.
Sharon Gregory, who works for gala sponsor Jane Iredale, with Emilie de Brigard, an historian of ethnographic film, who wore a turban and caftan made by a dressmaker in Ghana.
WAMC president Alan Chartock with S&Co founder Tina Packer; Elayne P. Bernstein, the benefactor whose namesake theater will open this summer at S&Co's new Production and Performing Arts Center, with her husband of four years, Sol Schwartz.
Berkshire Museum executive director Stuart Chase with former S&Co chairman of the board Michael Miller; Falls Village Children's Theater president Denise Cohn with Annette Miller, who's starring in The Ladies Man.
Tyisha Turner, who works in the S&Co box office, with Owen Barnett-Mulligan, an acting student.
Musicians Doc Scanlon & Colleen Pratt; David Schwartz and Tjasa Sprague.
The Ladies Man's Elizabeth Aspenlieder and photographer Sean McLaughlin; Carole Murko of the Boulderwood Group, who helped design the gala, with Jim Finnerty.
James & Kim Moin with Bill Barclay, S&Co's resident musical director
S&Co board member Carole Hyatt, Susie Hirshfield, and S&Co board chairmanRichard Mescon; gallery owner Denise Ulick with Seven Salon & Spa's Mark Johnson.
The tent on the verdant Shakespeare & Company lawn; Carolyn Fuller and Bill McAvinney who danced barefoot all evening long.
Janet Egelhofer and Vicki Winters unintentionally wore matching scarves from Chico's.
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Matteline deVries-Dilling, founder of Lite Brite Neon, one of the evening's honoree of this year's Upstate Benefit adresses the gala from the Caboose's caboose.
- Karen Pearson. Courtesy Art Omi.
Olana senior vice president and landscape curatorMark Prezorski, president Sean Sawyer, The evenings honoree Kristin Gamble and New York State Assemblymember Didi Barrett.
- Oxygen House Photo
