The Tavern<\/a>, a historic and haunted bar near the\u00a0Clarksville neighborhood. After a first ownership stint in the 1980s, Sedwick and Shelton formally took the reins once more in 2018. Their love for and desire to preserve the (literal) “Old Austin” haunt is akin to their dedication to Esther’s Follies; it’s not about competing with new and upcoming businesses in the Texas capital, Sedwick said, but rather preserving beloved spaces so they, too can survive in a changing business ecosystem.<\/p>\nArticle continues below this ad<\/p>\n
But a lot of that endurance, Sedwick credited, belonged to being at the right place and right time in history to start up a comedy venue.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“It was ’77, when all of comedy was starting to really get going around the country,” she said. “Improv companies and stand-up comedy companies were all doing very well so we were in that kind of forum. To me, it was the perfect time for it, and we got on Sixth Street, so \u2014 with Austin being a great city to do performances and to do comedy \u2014 it was just a really great time of year for us.”<\/p>\n
![\"Esther's]()
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Esther’s Follies, Austin’s original comedy club, will celebrate its 50th anniversary in 2027.<\/p>\n
Kelsey Thompson\/MySA<\/p>\n
As for its 50th anniversary celebration? Sedwick teased there are plenty of plans in store to celebrate the big 5-0 next year.<\/p>\n
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As Esther’s reflects on almost a half-century in the comedy scene and the next 50 to come, Sedwick said a key focus has been on training up future generation of comedians and helping them hone their craft and establish themselves in a dynamic and competitive industry.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Famous alums and performers affiliated with Esther’s Follies include No\u00ebl Wells (Saturday Night Live, Master of None), Todd Lowe (Gilmore Girls, True Blood) and Martha Kelly (Baskets with Zach Galifianakis, Euphoria).<\/p>\n
That’s where the Esther’s Follies Foundation comes into play. The nonprofit organization is centered around providing scholarships and other resources to young and emerging performers in both the comedy and theater worlds, as well as offering nighttime classes for adults and summer programs for kids.<\/p>\n
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“Esther’s is a really good training ground to go up to New York or LA afterwards, or wherever [performers] may want to go to. But because the Esther’s show is go getter every week, we put new pieces in every week \u2014 we write on the weekends, and on Monday we have a writers meeting and Tuesday we have everybody coming in with their scripts,” she said. “We can see what works and what doesn’t….but it’s a fly by the seat of your pants kind of show, and that’s really important.”<\/p>\n
Find it:\u00a0525 E. Sixth St., Austin, TX 78701<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Esther’s Follies, Austin’s original comedy club, will celebrate its 50th anniversary in 2027. Kelsey Thompson\/MySA Nestled in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":392949,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133,2107,820],"class_list":["post-392948","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news","tag-mysaentertainment","tag-mysastaff"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392948","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=392948"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392948\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/392949"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=392948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=392948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=392948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}