Shakespeare & Company celebrated the Bard's 444th birthday in Lenox on Wednesday night with a party and performance that featured excerpts from the company's A Midsummer Night's Dream, which has traveled 20,000 miles this winter to play before more than 40,000 students. There were also scenes from two plays that will premiere this summer: Bad Dates by Theresa Rebeck and The Goatwoman of Corvis County by Christine Whitley. There was music by a young indie band from Albany, Citizen Genet, that did a rock and roll version of "Willow," the traditional English song from Othello. And in inimitable and irreverent Shakespeare & Company fashion, managing director Nicholas Puma Jr. led the audience in an old-fashioned-sing along of Cole Porter's wickedly witty "Brush Up Your Shakespeare" from Kiss Me, Kate.
Journalist Bess Hochstein with Nicholas Puma Jr, Shakespeare & Company's managing director; Sophia Garder, the theater company's manager, wore a costume to sell raffle tickets during the reception.
Pam Johnson with Christopher Sink, the former managing director of Shakespeare & Company, and John MacClaren, the director of administration and finance for Bard College at Simon's Rock; Writer Judy Linscott with Sarah O'Connell of Salisbury Bank and Ann Usher of Crane & Co.
Cooking teacher Pooja Karina with accordionist and clown Heather Fisch; Jean Wolfersteig and Lois Walsh who teaches art at Marist College.
The BIFFMA Bunch: Gary Hill, the Church Street Gallery's Denise Ulick, photographer Kevin Sprague and Berkshire International Film Festival founder Kelley Vickery
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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
