Naked Empire Bouffon Company

Naked Empire Bouffon Company is an ensemble-based theatre company founded in 2009 by Nathaniel Justiniano.  We are dedicated to the training, research, and performance of bouffon.

We combine social activism with grotesque satire in original, actor-created bouffon performances for the stage and street.

What Is Bouffon? Bouffon, like ‘clown’ or ‘commedia’, is a term for a popular theatre tradition that has many interpretations depending on the artist using it.  We love how New York’s Eric Davis, aka Red Bastard (www.redbastard.com) describes bouffons as “basically a bunch of anti-clowns who are making fun of the audience and their values.  So imagine a pack of grotesque outcasts who are persecuted because they look different or because they live their life differently than normal, beautiful people.  They’re spit upon, they’re stoned, eventually they’re forced out of the village, but they come back with a vengeance and take the piss out of the people who threw them out.  Their weapons are charm, intelligence, and parody.”

Our work follows a notion of bouffon that was codified by the esteemed acting teacher and school director, Jacques Lecoq, and one of his first students, Philippe Gaulier.  They saw the bouffon as a contemporary version of the raunchy satyrs (source of the word satire) invented by the Greeks, as well as the medieval court jester or fool.   Due to their deformity or outrageous behavior, they were considered unrefined and undignified.  They were outsiders.  In the middle ages the fool became King for a Day during a once-a-year Feast of Fools celebration and took this opportunity to make sport of the monarchy, taxation, injustice, and social inequities.  It has been said that the King, in attendance and laughing along side the villagers, would later return home and commit suicide.

There will not be any monarchs in our audience, but there will be popular opinion leaders and a cross section of San Francisco residents who have a vested interest in the future of our community.  Although suicide is not the goal of our work, a healthy, if uncomfortable, stab at apathy and ignorance is.

Click on the photos below for larger image.

Nathaniel Justiniano has been a professional actor and director for 10 years.  He holds an MFA in Ensemble-Based Physical Theatre from Dell’Arte International School of Physical Theatre, North America’s center for the research, training, and performance of the actor/creator, where he collaborated or led the creation of nineteen new productions for the stage in a two and a half year period.  In 2007 he co-created Pax Americana, a satire of war as seen through the lens of United States history and EUOI!, a bouffon experiment in ecstatic ritual.  More recently, he performed with the SF Buffoons in their productions of The Hasheesh Eater and Spunk, a satire of gold rush-era San Francisco.  In 2009 he co-created Shame as a DIY Artist-in-Residence at Mama Calizo’s Voice Factory, one of San Francisco’s most popular new centers for queer and activist performance.  Mr. Justiniano also teaches workshops in bouffon, commedia dell’arte, and mask performance and currently serves as the Managing Director of the newly founded, Rapid Descent Physical Performance Company.  He has also been a professional community organizer and educator for GLBT youth empowerment programs for Childrens Hospital Los Angeles and the LA Gay & Lesbian Center, as well as a program manager for community-based theatre initiatives out of the National Conference for Community & Justice and Cornerstone Theater Company.