The Taming of the Shrew

Austin, USA

Spider House Ballroom
Jan 23 - Feb 29

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“What, with my tongue in your tail?”

Shakespeare’s wildest lovers storm Spider House Ballroom for the long awaited ATX premiere of Shit-faced Shakespeare®: The Taming of the Shrew.

Wealthy sisters Katherina and Bianca find themselves pitched against suspicious suitors, the entire renaissance patriarchy and each other. Why not throw in a booze soaked thespian for good measure?

Featuring cross dressing, food fights, a highly underwhelming horse, one too many bum cheeks and more twisted gender politics than you can shake a fawning fat-skinned fustilarian at!

Shit-faced Shakespeare® selects the finest Shakespeare plays, reduces them down to one hour spectaculars and adds a single drunken cast member to the mix every single night.

Warning: Shit-faced Shakespeare® is not for the faint of heart or those prone to theatrical purism!

Shit-faced Shakespeare®: The Taming of the Shrew is playing exclusively at Spider House Ballroom this spring. Book early!

Dramatis personæ

Shit-faced Shakespeare® features a cast of rotating players covering multiple roles over a run. You can, however, expect to see some of these Magnificent Bastards appearing in this production:

Kenneth Williams

Deep in the jungle, there lurks a beast with a tongue as long as twelve smaller jungle creatures standing nose to tail. It uses this tongue to hunt small prey and to attract a mate during the rainy season. It has, according to scientists, the 2nd most prodigious tongue in nature. Kenneth is number one on that list. Kenneth acts for Shit-faced Shakespeare and has a long tongue.

Kris Adkins

Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a full day. Teach Kris how to unlock your phone and you'll have dick-pics for life. We're not saying Kris is personally responsible for every dick-pic you receive of course...He's just really good at adding people to 'specifically curated' mailing lists. Kris is a highly respected actor and would appreciate it if you didn't tell his agent he was in this show.

Liz Waters

Please do not adjust your hearing device, that's really how quiet Liz is...I know right! On a clear night with a still wind, Liz’s dulcet tones can be heard gently wafting over The Plains as far as Cape Town. Truly an acoustic wonder, Liz has been performing with Shit-faced Shakespeare since 2017 and one day she hopes to leave.

Sunny Huang

This is Sunny’s first-ever show with Shit-faced Shakespeare and she is “resigned” to be here with you tonight. Sunny’s boundless enthusiasm, professional compartment, exemplary work ethic, and generosity of spirit are really starting to get on our fucking nerves. Seriously, knock it off, newbie, nobody likes a try-hard. We wish Sunny well in future employment. Sunny acts (like she’s a big bloody deal or something). She’ll be back in the spring. Big whoop.

Will Larsen

Will Larsen is the world’s second-biggest asshole. Only second to one Bob Mussett. This is not hyperbole. He once ordered a 6-inch ‘Subway’ with double cheese but only paid for single cheese at the counter. He once posted a birthday card to a friend knowing it would arrive a day late and didn’t even say ‘belated’. He once rode a bus and didn’t thank the driver profusely when getting off. Asshole.

Danielle Grisko

In 2016, the artist Anish Kapoor released a paint named Vantablack. It is so black that it absorbs 99% of the visible light spectrum. Kapoor forbade any other artist from using the color commercially. In 2017, competing artist Stuart Semple released Black 3.0, a paint even blacker, to the arts community. In 2020, Danielle joined Shit-faced Shakespeare with a heart even blacker. Deal with it.

Davey Morrison

Quickly! Try to remember the sexiest thing that’s ever happened to you! No, sexier than that… Sexy Wasn’t it? Well, meet Davey. This modern-day Casanova is said to emit a pheromone from a duct under his nipples so potent that only highly trained nuns can come within 100 ft. of him safely. Davey is an actor and a wonderful lover and definitely didn’t write this bio himself. Sexy.

Helyn Rain

Helyn Rain - has nothing to do with the weather. She is a human people person and proud of it. She’s got nothing against weather per se, it’s just annoying when you share a name with a meteorological phenomenon. Think about it, how many friends called snow, hail, or heatwave do you know? Exactly! So just to clarify: Helyn Rain = actor, rain = pattern of weather that makes everyone miserable. She does not do that.

Julius Alums

Grammar pedantry is not considered a professional competitive sport in the same manner as spelling bees or the far more formidable past-time of bee-spelling (where skilled apiarists wrangle a team of specially educated honey bees to form words and short haikus in mid-air). If it were a sport Julius would win a gold medal for pointing out 12 errors in the preceding sentence. He also acts a bit, when the mood strikes him.