ACT APPLAUDS SUPPORTERS

Standing O’s filled the Gold Room on Oct. 29 at the Fairmont Hotel, where the American Conservatory Theater hosted its starstudded Conservatory Awards Luncheon.

Directed by co-chairs and ACT trustees Sally Rosenblatt and Carlie Wilmans, the lively lunch raised $176K for ACT’s Scholarship Fund that supports the theater’s talented master of fine arts students.

Taking their bows: actors and ACT alum Benjamin Bratt, Anika Noni Rose

and Ryan Rilette, as well as dedicated ACT supporters Deedee and Burt McMurtry and Swedish Consul General Barbro

Osher, board chairwoman of the Bernard Osher Foundation, which, since 1979, has provided the conservatory with financial support.

“ACT doesn’t just produce theater,” noted Rilette, who recently moved from Marin Theatre Company to producing artistic director at the Round House Theatre in Washington, D.C. “ACT produces the next generation of theater artists.”

Shouting bravo: ACT Artistic Director Carey Perloff, Executive Director

Ellen Richard and Conservatory Director Melissa

Smith; ACT board Chairwoman Nancy Livingston and her husband, Fred Levin; ACT board President

Rusty Rueff and his wife, Patti Rueff; Alan Stein; Pam Kramlich and Gino Barcone.

“When I left ACT, I always felt like I should’ve had a law degree in my hand,” noted Rose, a Tony Awardwinning actor-singer. “Because that’s how hard we worked at the Conservatory.”

Bratt, the swoon-worthy EssEff native, Giants fan and award-winning actordirector, says his time at the Conservatory was also inspired by the late ACT co-founder Ed Hastings, who, during his tenure, strove for artistic diversity.

In tribute, Bratt is establishing an MFA diversity scholarship, which, he joked, will be called, “The Bratt Family Diversity Award, or BFD for short.” But he was serious in his praise of ACT.

“Where would we be without the arts?” he asked. “They reflect and encourage our very humanity.”

And Osher agreed with that sentiment.

“Nothing ever beats ‘live,’ and I’m not talking athletics,” Osher declared. “Whether you’re training for stage or film, there is nothing as great as live theater. And Carey and ACT carry that torch.”

Swell science: The scene was more swank than usual for scientists and supporters of the Gladstone Institutes on Oct. 18, when Ann and Gordon Getty hosted a salon supper for this independent nonprofit biomedical research organization.

Organized by Eva Price and her husband, Gladstone board Chairman Bill Price,

Susan Alpert and her husband, Dr. Bud Alpert, guests took in gourmet fare from Getty chef Jennifer Johnson and scintillating science by Gladstone President Dr.

Sandy Williams and Gladstone Stem Cell and Cardiovascular Research Director Dr. Deepak Srivastava.

But during a Q&A on the institutes’ game-changing technology, this fete’s loudest huzzahs heralded Gladstone investigator Dr.

Shinya Yamanaka, whose stem-cell research was recently honored with a 2012 Nobel Prize.