BIG NAZO

Rhode Island-based creative collective Big Nazo is an international performance group of visual artists, puppet performers, and masked musicians who unite to create bizarre and hilarious larger-than-life sized characters, environments, and spectacles (the name derives from the Italian for “big nose”. The improv performance group was launched in 1986 by Erminio Pinque, the group’s founder and artistic designer, who envisioned his concept as a puppet show without the stage. Renegade circus family contortionists, a rowdy rodeo horse, a giant three-eyed robot percussionist, break-dancing police officers, Mountain Trolls, blob-like go-go dancers, a charismatic lab rat and his giant man-eating chia pet are just a few of the characters, environments, and spectacles that create an irreverent musical Commedia full of irresolvable conflict, ridiculous dancing and an epic battle with the forces of chaos. Their innovative mask and puppetry techniques combine stand-up comedy, Sci-Fi, go-go dancing, daredevil stunts, soap opera hysterics and professional wrestling with live rock and funk music and audience-interactive improvisation. Big Nazo has recently opened its new downtown storefront Nazo Lab in downtown Providence. The Lab serves as an exhibition space, a creature-building workshop and community interface. Although they’re rooted in the northeastern USA (where they supported Spinal Tap on a Break Like The Wind tour stop), Big Nazo’s surreal extravaganzas have been experienced at prestigious international festivals in such far-flung locales as Quebec (2012 Montreal Just For Laughs), Nova Scotia (Halifax Busker Festival in 1987, where they evolved into a formal performance group, returning three times over the next decade), Japan (Osaka World Performance Fest), Singapore (2000 Chinese New Year), England (2000 Millennium Dome), Scotland (1991 Edinburgh Fringe) and Portugal (representing the United States at the 1998 Lisbon World Expo alongside Up With People).