About Us

Nathaniel Justiniano (Founder, Artistic Director)

Nathaniel is an actor/creator, director, movement designer, and teacher.  His satirical performances are outrageous comedies derived from today’s tragedies.  In 2007, under the direction of Master Teacher Giovanni Fusetti, 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, inspired by the research of anthropologist, Barbara Ehrenreich.  In 2009 he led the creation of SHAME!, Naked Empire’s debut that skewered the San Francisco queer community. His short one-man show, Cousin Cruelty’s Compulsion, addresses the use of institutional violence in society and was one of the offerings in the 2011 International Home Theatre Festival, as well as the subject of a feature column in the San Francisco Bay Guardian. Throughout 2012 and 2013, he co-created and performed in You Killed Hamlet (or Guilty Creatures Sitting At A Play), a satire about avoiding death which won critical acclaim, the San Francisco Best of the Fringe Award, the Vancouver/Plank Magazine Talk of the Fringe Award, a nomination for Vancouver’s Georgia Straight Critic’s Pick Award, and was an Official Selection of the Toronto Festival of Clowns. In 2014 he began a multi-year project directing and co-creating You Fucking Earned It (formerly titled My Fellow ‘Mericans), a bouffon duet co-created by company members, Sabrina Wenske and Cara McClendon, that shines an unflattering light on the American Dream and economic imperialism.  Excerpts of ‘Mericans have been seen and celebrated at MOJO Theatre and PianoFight, and the full-length version of the show premiered in 2016. In the summer of 2015, he represented Naked Empire in a two-person, cross-disciplinary collaboration with Vancouver-based contemporary dance legend, Karen Jamieson, in Trickster, a biting and funny dissection of dance and dance-making that they performed in the Dancing on the Edge Festival. Class privilege was the target in his one-person show called Do What You Love. The piece was a result of over a year of research and collaboration with theater-makers including the co-founder of Theatre de la Jeune Lune, Robert Rosen, fellow bouffon and founder of Toronto’s Play On Theatre, Adam Lazarus, as well as the former star of Las Vegas’ hit show, Absinthe, Gabriel McKinney. Currently, he is directing and co-creating Naked Empire’s one-person show, How To Catch A Karen, skewering white supremacist delusion among white progressives. Nathaniel also leads Naked Empire’s training program, teaching his award-winning, weekend-long intensive across North America, and in 2013, as a member of the faculty of the San Francisco Clown Conservatory, he directed a 7-week Bouffon Intensive, the most comprehensive bouffon training ever offered in the United States. Nathaniel also performs for other companies.  He has performed with The Thrillpeddlers in their mega-hit, Pearls Over Shanghai, as well as with The Cutting Ball Theater in Ubu Roi, directed by Wilma Theater’s Yury Urnov, for which he was awarded Best Puppetry by the SF Weekly. In 2014, he worked for 6-months as a physical comedian in Tyre Change, an original short play conceived and directed by Gabriel McKinney that he performed over 400 times at Abu Dhabi’s Ferrari World. Since 2012, he has worked with We Players as a performer in their epic productions of The Odyssey on Angel Island, Macbeth at Fort Point, and Ondine at Sutro which earned 7 Theatre Bay Area Award Nominations and a win for him with the supremely long-titled award of Outstanding Performance for an Actor in a Featured Role in a Play. Also with We Players he co-created and performed HEROMONSTER, a ritual poem that looked unflinchingly at our darkness and our light, co-created and performed an experimental adaptation of Beowulf, and he designed the movement, assistant directed, and performed in Midsummer of Love, a 6-person adaptation of Shakespeare’s play. He has served as the Director of Physical Comedy for the Sacramento Shakespeare Festival, guest teacher of physical theatre at Sacramento City College and Kinetic Arts Center of Oakland, Movement Designer for UC Berkeley’s TDPS Department, core faculty of the SF Clown Conservatory, and guest faculty at the Juilliard School. He has also been a professional community organizer and educator for LGBT 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.  He holds a BFA in Theatre Performance from Chapman University and an MFA in Ensemble-Based Physical Theatre from Dell’Arte International School of Physical Theatre. Since the Fall of 2018, he has been a full-time Assistant Professor in the Performing Arts and first-in-the-nation Comedic Arts program at Emerson College in Boston, MA.

contact > nathaniel [at] nakedempirebouffon [dot] org

Program director, Sabrina Wenske, performs at PianoFight. Photo by Arnista Photography