Sweet Tea Shakespeare Inc

We're Sweet Tea Shakespeare, a small, emerging professional 501(c)3 theatre and music company focused on making magical, simple, elemental performances that call forth the heart and imagination of our audiences and artists.

Thanks to the investment and vision of our partners at The Capitol Encore Academy (TCEA), a public, arts-integrated charter school in Downtown Fayetteville, North Carolina, we're focused on funding an all-new set of adventures in an open, undeveloped space adjacent to their new high school. We've long been partners of TCEA as they've hosted rehearsals and performances, facilitated production storage, and worked with us closely on several productions. 

The new space, which we're calling the Yard on Arch Street, provides us opportunity to deepen and extend our work in Fayetteville with a new "home base" for our work. To this point, we've been an itinerant theatre company, with performances and production stock held all over the area. While this site-specific work will continue, we're excited about the possibilities this new location brings.

TCEA is hard at work on developing the performance site itself, which consists of a previously abandoned lot that once held a historic home and the businesses contained therein, including the old Smith Advertising firm. A few years ago, the building was condemned by one department of the city, but because it was a local historic landmark, the community lost an important piece of its past. With TCEA, we hope to redeem the site as a place of cultural and community value.

This fundraiser seeks funds to create exciting new programs, including hallmark Sweet Tea Shakespeare performances, concerts, public art opportunities, and more. If funded at $3000 or more, the project becomes eligible for additional funding from Gannett's A Community Thrives initiative. Gannett is the major news publishing company that owns The Fayetteville Observer. 

Each dollar we raise goes directly to Yard programming expenses, funding artists and collaborators, production and event needs, and more over the course of the next year.