entertaining the imagination

& taking it to the street

Circo de Nada is a theatre, puppetry and music project led by Nick Trotter. We produce unconventional performances and take them to the street—wherever the people are: schools, churches, theaters, or even just the streets!

Our goal is to perform a mixture of theatre, music and Carnavalesque spectacle, on the streets or within theaters and other institutions, using masks, puppets, and music to create performance that literally moves people. Our name, seemingly nonsensical, refers to the practice of using minimal sets, costumes and production values, along with improvisation, found objects and junkyard music, to conjure up worlds of imagination and flights of fancy. We are Denver-based, and are committed to creating performance in the here-and-now, responding to the issues and needs of this community and this land. To that extent, we are creators of Theatre of Place. But Denver is not just in Colorado, it's on the Earth—so we do projects with a global literary heritage as well, and we are built to be portable and to tour.

We do this because our society is increasingly divided, polarized, individualized and isolationist. Circo de Nada exists to move entertainment and imagination across the gaps, to bring people together in laughter and wonder.

We use the plastic arts of mask, puppetry and style to break out of the mundane realism that pervades theatre today. We believe that entertainment and fantasy are more important than instruction or weighty ideas. We create music that inspires actual movement. And we break out of the tired architecture of "the arts" to bring laughter and movement directly to the public.

in 2020, we are adding a new mission: to create space on the Stage for people who have been excluded from it. Women and non-binary folk, people of color, and the differently-abled are being welcomed into our circle to create a multi-code, polyglot ensemble that embodies the Commedia spirit in the 21st Century. We live together. We must learn to play together.