LOVELAND, Colo. — Once a ringmaster for the Greatest Show on Earth, Kevin Venardos nearly lost everything — until a rented tent and a bold vision brought him back under the spotlight.
It's Phoenix Baisa's job to meet the audience before the show, welcome them, and help them to their seats. Call her the circus greeter.
What the audience doesn't yet know, as they take their seats under the big tent, is that Baisa is also the star of the show.
Venardos Circus, set up in a parking lot in Loveland, is what happens when you don't give up.
Venardos almost did.
“If you can get a community to believe in you, there is not a power on heaven and earth that will stop you,” Venardos said.
For Venardos, it used to be all a balancing act.
"I had to be brought to my absolute knees to recognize, to begin to nurture a sense of gratitude," he said.
Venardos said the show reinvents the American circus as a stage‑driven experience centered on artistry, narrative, and connection.
Earlier in the day, the cast rehearsed.
"This year we’re doing a story which is Alice in Wonderland, and I’m Alice,” Baisa said.
While Baisa and Angel Ramos warm up, Venardos remembers having nothing, except an idea.
"Having the experience to be ringmaster of the Ringling Circus, I was 22 when I got that gig, in my naivety, most of this mess happened in my early 30s," he said.
That mess after he left the Greatest Show on Earth had his head spinning. Bad decisions, bankruptcy, and an apartment with no furniture.
"Pain is like a spoon that carves out room in your heart, and it’s only then you have room for gratitude to get in there,” Venardos said.
► Watch Mike Castellucci's report in the player below:
He had a dream. He built his own circus.
“We made a little video of a circus that didn’t exist in a rented tent. A vision for a thing I once wanted to accomplish, and I used that video to pitch a dream,” he said.
Today, 12 years later, he's getting people to see the magic.
Venardos wondered how he could use his dream to help others accomplish theirs.
He's doing it every day.
Things are getting easier now. All he has to do is look into the audience.
"We’ve touched dreamers who’ve been in the house, and it's inspired them to live their circus dream. Whatever that is," he said.
Monday was the last day for the show’s Loveland run. It then splits into multiple touring companies to hit the road.
