Esther’s Follies has spent nearly five decades turning the world’s headlines into satire on its Sixth Street stage. Now the Austin comedy theater is launching a nonprofit foundation aimed at preserving that history while creating education programs and training opportunities for younger performers.

The newly created Esther’s Follies Theater Foundation will focus on three main areas: preserving and documenting the theater’s history, expanding arts education programs for young people, and creating new opportunities for emerging performers and writers. The initiative comes as the theater approaches its 50th anniversary and as organizers consider how to preserve its creative legacy.

“Our thinking about our 50th anniversary coming up has started that kind of ball rolling,” said Ellana Breedlove, a longtime Esther’s performer helping co-founder Shannon Sedwick lead the foundation’s rollout.

“We have a lot of people that love and have loved the Follies for so long,” she said. “So many supporters of Shannon and [her husband] Michael’s work, and so it kind of felt like a really great time to sort of combine all the talents and all the history and move forward with it.”

“It’s so easy to have things slip away, like photographs get rained on and things like that. We are definitely interested in making sure that we don’t screw up and leave the world nothing to know us by.”

Shannon Sedwick, Esther’s Follies co-founder

Part of the motivation also grew out of lessons learned during the COVID-19 pandemic, when the theater was forced to close and launched a series of online sketches funded through online donations. That move to digital performances kept the company working while audiences were stuck at home.

“We got about 1,500 to 2,000 people per month that gave a little bit,” Sedwick said. “We ended up being able to make little pieces of comedy each week … and we were able to keep them all working and not having to leave town.”

The foundation’s preservation efforts will focus on a documentary project currently in development. Sedwick said the work will include organizing decades of photos, video recordings and news coverage documenting both the theater and Austin’s live performance culture.

Local schools are expected to be the foundation’s primary targets for bringing comedy and performance programming to students in Austin. Breedlove said organizers hope to work directly with teachers and theater departments, especially at the high school level.

Programs could range from short performances with classroom discussions to longer workshops that help students develop their own material.

“We take what’s in the news and we find the funny or we find how to make sense of it in our own hearts and minds,” Breedlove said. “And a big part of that with the kids stuff is really looking at kindness and empathy … how do we not put down, but build each other up.”

Breedlove said the foundation’s third pillar will focus on developing new artists in Austin, with plans for workshops, writing labs and performance training aimed at comedians, actors and musicians in the early stages of their careers. Sedwick said the foundation is also exploring scholarship support for young, student-age performers.

The archival effort is partly motivated by the reality that cultural history can easily disappear if it isn’t documented.

“It’s so easy to have things slip away, like photographs get rained on and things like that,” Sedwick said. “We are definitely interested in making sure that we don’t screw up and leave the world nothing to know us by.”

The foundation is still in its early stages. Organizers have launched an initial fundraising campaign with a $25,000 goal to support the documentary project and archival work. In parallel, the foundation’s leaders are applying for grants and assembling a small advisory board.

Breedlove said conversations with local schools are expected to begin this summer as the organization prepares its first phase of programs.

“We’re really excited right now about where this is headed,” she said. “It’s a way that the foundation can keep that legacy going and give back in ways that it hasn’t yet.”