Circo De Nada Presents IDIOPATHIC

Circo de Nada to present Idiopathic, a new work of abstract clown art and movement by Nick Trotter. Performances will be February 28 through March 2 at 7:30 PM at the People's Building, 9995 E. Colfax Ave, Aurora, CO 80010. Tickets are $15 online and are available at www.artful.ly/store/events/17107.

About the show: Circo de Nada presents Idiopathic, a new experimental work by Nick Trotter. Fusing the dramatic territories of Clown and Tragedy, this gut-wrenching piece of physical theatre explores the liminal state between balance and falling, and the consequences of the human heart's choice between the two.

Arising from Trotter's own experience with addiction, anxiety and insomnia, Idiopathic is a hallucinatory vision of a life whose purpose and meaning have eroded from within, and whose stability has become simply impossible.

The title is a term used by doctors and scientists to identify diseases or conditions that they can't explain: the literal translation from classical Greek is "self-caused." It's an assertion of nonsense, a surrender to absurdity in the face of our own ignorance and misunderstanding. Idiopathic explores the emotional condition of cycles, of actions that apparently have no beginning-and no end. If we don't know how we get into these cycles, how can we find out way out? Is there a way out at all? Or is our condition congenital: is our Self, in fact, the cause?

The player is presented in a fractured vision of the Clown, with a red nose and the wreckage of whiteface. Clowns are often maligned as fake and trite, or as blandly "scary". But they have the potential to illuminate the extreme difficulties of the human condition with humor and poetry. By offering themselves up for public humiliation, they can turn degradation inside out and produce empathy.

The music for the show, partly composed and partly improvised, is a collaboration between Nick Trotter and Saladin Thomas, who will be performing live during this production. The instruments are circular saw blades, rusted brake drums, sheet metal and other found objects and noisemakers. This junk: broken, corroded, and used against the intentions that created it, replaces the notion of charming harmonies and melodies with the sound of what is cast off from human activity, and is therefore an echo of real human experience.

Principle artists include:

Circo de Nada is a theater, music and puppetry project created by Nick Trotter. Its mission is to Entertain the Imagination, with bold, stylized and fantastical performances, and to Take It to the Street: tear down the traditional or habitual trappings of theater, to make these performances accessible to audiences who crave imagination. Their productions include The Book of Jonah, a shadow-puppetry adaptation of the story from the Hebrew bible, and Henry Four, an adaptation of Shakespeare's historical dramas, which will receive its Denver premiere later in 2019. Please visit CircoDeNada.com for more information.

Nick Trotter is a graduate of the MFA program at Dell'Arte International in California, and has also trained at the Boulder Circus Center with Giovanni Fusetti, and at Tisch School of the Arts, New York University. He specializes in Clown, Bouffon, Commedia dell'Arte, and puppetry, and is a mask and nose maker. His project Circo de Nada regularly performs improv at the Voodoo Comedy Playhouse in Denver, and he also teaches Mask, Commedia and Clown classes in Denver. He performs as King Henry and Falstaff, and created shadow puppets, in Henry Four, an adaptation of Shakespeare's King Henry the Fourth parts I & II, a production he created with Amy Driesler.

Saladin Thomas is a freelance musician and improviser. He is the drummer for the local band To Be Astronauts, and performs in the Dinner Detectives interactive murder-mystery show, and with the improv group Full Spectrum.

Tickets are $15 online
www.artful.ly/store/events/17107