The Vespertine Circus is a collection of young, ambitious artists on a quest to spread joy and absurdity. 

The troupe consists of seven main characters; a neo-burlesque troupe of dancers with backgrounds in ballet, hip-hop and everything in between; and a genre-bending and blending band. They've been putting on shows in Oakland for seven months and are gearing up to move their spectacle outdoors and into parks this spring.

To begin, the troupe created an all new two-hour show of stunts, acrobatics, clowning, juggling, magic, fire-dance, storytelling, puppets and mayhem each and every month. The Vespertine Circus has now put together six different full-length shows and is working on stringing together its best acts and taking them on tour.

The goal? To inspire, amuse and delight people of all ages and backgrounds with a show that harkens back to the golden era of American circus. The circus brings larger-than-life characters into all kinds of spaces and brings diverse crowds together in a magical and fun experience, drawing heavily upon audience participation and direct involvement with their environment.

These circus clowns have done a great deal to bring people into their world of magic and mayhem.

Following several conversations during intermission with the locals and people who drove across the bridge to attend a show, I learned quite a bit about local Oakland culture and helpful hints on what are great places to eat and good things to do. The hardest part about moving into a new city is learning where the best place to get food is, how to deal with parking and dealing with the reputation that Oakland has earned in the past decade of riots, murders, sideshows and prostitution. It is great to have local Oakland people getting out, interacting and spreading joy.

You can help bring free family shows to parks all over the Bay Area and beyond to contributing to a Kickstarter campaign to raise donations for an outdoor rig for traveling acts. Learn more  here.   They say "We want to raise enough money to buy a collapsible, free-standing aerial rig, that we could take with us wherever we went. This would mean we could start putting on park shows, and greatly diversify the types of audiences we could reach. It would make going on tour possible."