BERKELEY, CA—California Shakespeare Theater has received a 2-year, $160,000 grant from the Dean & Margaret Lesher Foundation, which was awarded to support of the Theater’s on-going operations, plus a capital investment of $100,000 toward Phase I of their plans to reinvigorate the Bruns Amphitheatre as a permanent, sustainable and welcoming home for the Theater’s artists and audiences.

“We are so grateful to the Dean and Margaret Lesher Foundation for their generous support of Cal Shakes,” commented Managing Director Susie Falk. “2010 is a landmark year for Cal Shakes, with our first commissioned world premiere scheduled to open on our main stage, the 10th anniversary of Jonathan Moscone’s artistic leadership, and the scheduled completion this summer of the first phase of our construction project, The Campaign for the Future. With this award, the Lesher Foundation reaffirms its leadership in supporting significant cultural institutions in the East Bay.”

The Dean & Margaret Lesher Foundation has been a vital partner in Cal Shakes’ emergence as a cultural force in the Bay Area arts scene. Since 1998, the Foundation’s generous on-going support has nourished Cal Shakes’ artistic vibrancy, and enabled the Theater to serve its audiences in three fundamental and distinct ways: through a body of critically acclaimed and theatrically innovative Main Stage work; the formalization in 2001 of the company’s arts education activities through its Artistic Learning program; and the launch of the Theater’s pioneering New Works/New Communities program in 2003, whose most recent project, an adaptation of John Steinbeck’s The Pastures of Heaven, will open the 2010 Main Stage season.

Since 1994, the Dean & Margaret Lesher Foundation has awarded grants totaling more than $40 million and reaching citizens in all parts of Contra Costa County. True to the original wishes of Dean and Margaret Lesher, the Foundation continues to build on the strengths of the community by supporting organizations and programs that provide help and support to people in need; enhance and enrich the lives of all citizens; and promote a healthy and exciting future for the community.

For more info about Cal Shakes, please visit www.calshakes.org.

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