In October of 2000, at 22-years-old, Kevin Venardos circled a job advertisement in the back
of Backstage Magazine for a ringmaster position in Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus. He mailed in a headshot and resume and was soon awarded the job. Unbeknownst to him at the time, working in the circus would turn out to be Venardos’s ultimate love and passion in life.
By the time Venardos became a ringmaster, Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus had evolved from performances in small tents to grand-scale arenas. Although he did not know where his current ringmaster position would lead him, Venardos said working for the extravagant circus was “an extraordinary, life-changing experience. It was a new world of people, a new way of life. I fell in love with it.”
Venardos was fascinated by a circus’s potential to tell a story or to send a message to an audience. “The circus is a platform, just like the theater,” he said.
After five years with the well known circus, Venardos noticed that the circuses he worked for were becoming smaller and smaller in magnitude. He realized there were not many circuses around the country offering career opportunities and feared he was going to run out of places to work.
Instead of opting for a career change, Venardos began to imagine creating his own circus.
“I knew I could make it happen if I could get someone to sign a contract,” he said.
Taking a leap of faith, Venardos put what little money he had into building Venardos Circus Productions.
“Instead of spending money on food or gas, I spent it on producing a one minute and 16 second long promotional video to put on the website,” Venardos said. “I used the video to pitch a circus that I did not own.”
After countless failures, Venardos can now look back on the journey to build the Venardos Circus.
Venardos Circus had its first job in the LA County Fair in 2014. It was the first time someone paid to have Vernados’s production brought to a stage. Over the following years, Venardos stitched together more fair dates.
“By year three or four we started selling tickets to a few different venues along the route in between the fairs,” Venardos recalled, “the fair dates would be guaranteed money, while the self-promoted dates were 100 percent our own risk.”
After a period of time juggling both, Venardos Circus let go of the fair dates and began working exclusively on its own self-promoted events. By 2019, Venardos Circus had performed at 28 venues ranging from Miami to Tacoma in a 45-week time span.
“In time, this dream would satisfy my own dream and become much more than that,” Venardos said, “we are keeping the circus tradition alive and reinventing it.”
Although Venardos feels he has kept his own dreams alive, he did not always receive support.
“I guess I have to thank the people who said I couldn’t do it,” Venardos said with a chuckle, “although now it is not the haters that inspire me; it is that the circus does so much good. The shared memories between families, the economic impact that we have on the communities we visit and from giving people jobs.”
Venardos believes the circus sends the message to its audience that people are capable of achieving great things when they choose to work together. “It’s teamwork,” Venardos said, and Venardos Circus itself “is a dream that came true from a small group of people working together.”
Known as “the little circus that could,” the Venardos Circus is a magical, intimate performance that features music, comedy, audience participation, aerial acrobatics and much more.
“It’s a whole world of amazements,” Venardos said.
One of the defining things about this circus is it does not include animals.
“It’s just a show with humans and you can make an incredible show with only humans,” Venardos said.
By not including animals in the circus, Venardos does not wish to make a political statement. “Just because I don’t have animals, people think it’s a political thing but it’s not a politically motivated thing at all,” he said. While he thinks there is a way for animals to have a quality of life in a circus, Venardos said he believes the future of the circus is one without animals and is reflective of the times.
This summer, Venardos Circus is coming to Colorado for the first time ever, with performances in Littleton from July 14 to July 25, Longmont / Boulder from July 28 to August 8, and Colorado Springs from August 11 to August 22. Tickets can be bought on the Venardos Circus website.
In Longmont, Venardos Circus will partner with and pitch their tent next to Outworld Brewing.
“We are looking forward to having the circus here,” owner of Outworld Brewing Brian Fuller said. “I think it’s going to be exciting for Longmont and it will be exciting for us.”
It is the first time that we have done something like this, Fuller said, and Outworld Brewing will modify their hours to accommodate circus attendees. “We are hoping that people from Longmont come to enjoy the circus and come to Outworld Brewing.”
