Shakespeare & Young Company Spring performances May 10 and 11 at Founders' Theatre

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Lenox — Shakespeare & Young Company, some of the youngest members of Shakespeare & Company, light up Founders’ Theatre with the 8th annual Spring Session performances. Offerings include two different vignettes for each day with Saturday May 10th featuring: Marina and The Law; and Sunday, May 11th featuring Brave New World and Denmark. All are performed by the 16-20 year-old participants with scenes compiled from excerpts from Shakespeare’s classic tales. Shakespeare & Company’s Education programs have reached nearly one million students since 1978 with its performances, workshops, and residencies.

S&YCo performances are at 7:30pm with tickets available for $12 for adults and $8 for students. Please call the Box Office at (413) 637-3353 or visit the Shakespeare & Company website at www.shakespeare.org for information and to reserve your tickets.

Headed by Youth Programs Director Jonathan Croy and co-directed with Company actor Michael F. Toomey, Shakespeare scenes for the Spring Session of S&YCo include excerpts from Pericles, The Merchant of Venice, The Tempest and Hamlet. Marina follows her story from Pericles, Brave New World is a distillation of The Tempest, Denmark explores the tragedy of Hamlet, and The Law is a compilation of Shakespeare scenes revolving around justice. The Spring Session of S&YCo involves 25 participants who tackle the scenes, which have been culled from several of Shakespeare’s plays, and revolve around a particular theme.

The Spring Session of S&YCo runs for 13 weeks and is an after-school program modeled on the Summer Session of Shakespeare & Young Company, founded in 1991. Past participants have continued to train with the Company, performing in Mainstage productions and participating in the Summer Training Institute and directing in the Fall Festival of Shakespeare. S&YCo alumni Jacqueline Antonson, Grant Haywood, Lydia Barnett-Mulligan and Julie Webster all appeared in The Servant of Two Masters on the Rose Footprint in 2006; Meg O’Connor, who participated in the first year of SY&Co is now the Director of S&YCo; and Jake Elitzer, Gillian and Alex Hurst all appeared in last season’s hit Scapin. Julie Webster will be back on the Mainstage again this season as Yvonne in The Ladies Man after her success as Hermia in the 2007 production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

The Company’s award-winning Education Program is one of the most extensive theatre-in-education programs in the Northeast, and has reached over a million students since 1978 with innovative performances, workshops, and residencies including The New England Tour of Shakespeare, the Fall Festival of Shakespeare, Shakespeare & Young Company, Riotous Youth, the Shakespeare in the Courts (with the Berkshire Juvenile Court), Shakespeare in our Schools: Workshops for Teachers and Actors, and the National Instituted on Teaching Shakespeare..

Guided by Education Director Kevin G. Coleman and Company education artists and teachers, educators continue to develop and fine-tune their programs to enhance and complement curricular activities in elementary, middle, and high schools across the country. The Education Program recently received the prestigious 2006 Coming Up Taller Award presented by First Lady Laura Bush at the White House in January of last year, and in 2005 it also received the Commonwealth Award, the highest award for excellence in the arts, sciences and humanities given by the state of Massachusetts. It was also the subject of an in-depth, two-year study by Harvard University’s Project Zero which recommended national replication. The Education Program has been identified by the Arts Education Partnership and the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities as a Champion of Change. The Program is focused on bringing Shakespeare alive and into the lives of as many students and teachers as possible through the active exploration and performance of Shakespeare’s plays The Program is also focused on bringing Shakespeare alive and into the lives of as many students and teachers as possible through the active exploration and performance of Shakespeare’s plays. Shakespeare & Company arts-in-education programs receive major support from The National Endowment for the Arts, The National Endowment for the Humanities, Legacy banks Foundation, Berkshire Bank Foundation, the Massachusetts Cultural Council and its local cultural councils, Country Curtains and The Red Lion Inn, and many other local corporations, private foundations, and individuals.
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A Boutique Hotel is Bringing Guests a Luxury Stay in Lenox

By Breanna SteeleiBerkshires Staff

LENOX, Mass. — A new Inn is bringing a boutique-style stay for visitors and locals to enjoy.

Owners, Sullivan Capital LLC, purchased the property, located on 135 Main Street, in 2024. After a year or renovations, Garden Gables Inn is open for business. 

"Garden Gables started off as one of the many Berkshire cottages, 1790 was the date on that, and it's always operated as an inn," said Hospitality Manager Yvonne Walton. "It's just a great gathering place and relaxation spot for people to come and get the feel of Lenox, and just slow down and enjoy the nature and the surrounding area...get culture and art and see some great concerts. I think it'll be a wonderful place, definitely does more of the upper-scale hospitality." 

Owners Niko Giallouis and Eric Sullivan bought the property from the former owner. Sullivan had his eye on Lenox since attending a wedding almost 10 years ago.

"I came to a wedding in Lenox, probably six or seven years ago. Personally, just kind of fell in love with the area, and I guess that's kind of how it got on my radar. So you know from that perspective, as we got into the hotel business out towards an area, it was a place I was kind of monitoring and waiting for the right property to show up."

After purchasing the two underwent a full renovation, a project that cost around $1.5 million. The building, first built in 1780, required some TLC. Sullivan's wife, Jessica, who owns Jessica Sullivan Design, designed the inn.

Sullivan said they installed a new roof, repainted everything, renovated the bathrooms, installed new floors, a new HVAC system, and new plumbing.

"We really touched everything from the outside...I mean, all the aesthetics and layouts changed a bit," he said. "As I said, put about a million and a half into it. All new furniture, fixtures, everything. The design's completely different. It wasn't a full gut, but it was a heavy, heavy renovation."

The two like to collaborate with local businesses, and they make a point to direct visitors to local restaurants, businesses, and attractions.

"If guests are asking for recommendations, our customer service team, our guest services team, will relay that kind of information. Even if we can call and make a reservation for somebody, happy to do it," he said. "We aren't doing breakfast, but what we do is we have partnerships with a lot of the breakfast places downtown. We actually purchase a gift certificates for each person each day, so that they can use that to go downtown."

Sullivan hopes that guests don't see their inn as just a place to sleep and dump their bags, but make it an experience for anyone who stays.

"We really focus on kind of the experience side of things, so again, we want to give you the best experience you can have here...and we want that not just to be the place you put your bag and go do things. It's important to think of everything," he said.

Sullivan said partnerships are important to their business and are a way to connect with locals.

"The local partnerships, I can't stress that enough, because no matter how much and how great the room is, people are still going to want to go do other things," he said. "So, I think it just benefits everybody if we're all working together and so forth, and supporting the community, being neighborly too, because we are surrounded by residential homes...But we really try to put a lot of blood, sweat, and tears, a lot of love into the building, all the details, really care about the senses," Sullivan said.

The Inn's check-in and reservations are completely online. When guests arrive, all they have to do is check in online and receive their code that they will use to enter their room. Sullivan hopes this helps create less stress for guests and gets them to their room as fast as possible, especially after a long trip.

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