The Great Austin Shake Off,

About the event

The Great Austin Shake Off is a first-of-its-kind collaborative fundraiser between Austin’s three prominent and long-established Shakespeare nonprofits: Austin Shakespeare, The Baron’s Men, and Walking Shadow Shakespeare Project, along with ATX Theatre: an organization dedicated to bringing Austin’s 80+ theatre companies together.

Each company will nominate three actors to perform a speech of their choice across three rounds: Comedy, History, and Tragedy. After each round, the audience will vote with their dollars to choose a winner. To cap off the event, a leader from each organization will perform Hamlet’s “To Be Or Not To Be” as a final round, and an overall champion will be crowned.

Date: Saturday, August 22, 7:30 pm
Estimated Runtime: 2 hours with frequent breaks
Venue: Austin Scottish Rite Theater: 207 W 18th St, Austin
Admission: $10 | Votes: $1 each
Accessibility: ASL interpretation, Audio Description, Face Masks, Air Purifiers, Fidget Cubes, English and Spanish context and summaries

Why should you sponsor?

Supporting this event is supporting community collaboration in the face of rapidly decreasing Arts Funding in the United States. Instead of siloing off further from each other to compete for audiences and funding in the same Shakespeare theatre focus, these three organizations are coming together in the name of wholesome, spirited competition to work together. 

You'll reach the event audiences of course, as we expect to sell out Austin's Historic Scottish Rite Theater, but beyond that you'll be reaching all of the participants and audiences from each separate organization. Combined, these three theatre companies present almost 100 nights of entertainment to over 10,000 Austin residents yearly. Becoming a sponsor of this one event is an introduction to that widespread network. 

In addition to being on promotion materials, in the event program, named in the thank you's at the top and end of show, and for our Gold Sponsors - having a banner right behind the ticket check-in where everyone entering will see first, we invite representatives from each sponsoring organization to attend the event and receive their own "golden ticket" to vote on each round of the competition. This will include sponsors in a meaningful and exciting way, to make them part of the gamesmanship of the event. 

Stephanie Crugnola

I'm the Artistic Director of one of the producing organizations: Walking Shadow Shakespeare Project. I'm the Senior Brand Marketing Manager of a Digital Marketing Agency, and have a long history in marketing, arts, and educaiton. My Master's Degree is in Early Modern Literature, and I started Walking Shadow in 2011, and since then we have produced over 30 performances live, 20 virtual zoom readings during 2020-1, and numerous fundraisers, special events, and educational workshops. 

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