Washington-based circus returns to Olympia this weekend for 14-show run
.jpg "Shoestring Circus will perform 14 shows in Olympia between June 27 and July 6.")
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Shoestring Circus returns to Olympia with a museum-themed summer production.
- Guest appearance from actor Richard Kind is a staple of this year's run.
- Tour expands to four Washington cities with over 300 performers applying in 2025.
Shoestring Circus returns to Olympia this week for its second run of Thurston County shows.
Last year’s 14-show run at the Port of Olympia’s Swantown Marina, the circus’s first outside of its hometown of Bellingham, saw a warm enough reception that Shoestring decided to add two more Washington cities to its tour this year, Orting and Vancouver.
It also netted the circus this summer’s celebrity guest: actor Richard Kind.
“We met him in Olympia last year, randomly at a restaurant, told him about our circus and became friends,” Nicole Laumb, one of Shoestring’s four owners, said in an interview at a June rehearsal in Bellingham. “He came to the show, we had dinner with him, and he said, ‘If you need anything, let me know.’ So we got the gusto up to be, ‘Would you like to do a voice act in our show?’ So when people come to the show, the introduction is done by Richard Kind, and he pops up a couple other times throughout the show.”
It’s not Shoestring’s first run-in with a high-profile actor. Last year’s run featured “Severance” star Britt Lower, who became involved in the circus world while developing her 2019 film “Circus Person.” Lower surprised the Shoestring crew by discussing her role during an appearance on “Late Night with Seth Meyers.”
“We got a kind of a tease of a text, and we were like, ‘Oh, yeah, of course, we’ll watch you on TV,’” Laumb said. “But we didn’t know it was because she was going to have a picture of her on our tent with our name on Seth Meyers.”
Circus has a new theme
In addition to swapping out celebrities, Shoestring has a new theme this year.
“We try to make them very, very different than the year before, so it feels like people that see our show every year are coming into a whole new world,” Laumb said. “Last year’s show was like a medieval fantasy, so we were like, what’s super different from that? A museum.”
Sadye Osterloh, who founded the circus in 2022 alongside Laumb, Justin Therrien and Matthew McCorkle, directs the show. According to Osterloh, the show offers its own spin on the theme.
“It’s not really what you’d expect when you think of museum theme,” Osterloh said. “It’s beautiful types of art, and then there’s just a really fun story line. … It’s full of whimsy, beauty, comedy.”
There are six new actors as well, including a former China’s Got Talent winner and a pair of acrobats who featured in “Water for Elephants” on Broadway.
According to Laumb, Shoestring picked its new performers from more than 300 applications.
“Sometimes we see an artist or an act that we hear great things about them as a person, and we also really like what they do, and we’ll start talking to them early on. … And then the other part is our submission process, which we were pretty shocked, we got over 300 applications this year,” Laumb said.
How to buy Shoestring Circus tickets
Shoestring will hold 14 shows in Olympia between Friday, June 27, and Sunday, July 6. The shows will take place under Shoestring’s big-top near Swantown Marina and Boatworks.
The first weekend will feature shows on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, while the following week will have Thursday shows as well. Tickets cost $34.50 for adults and $17 for children between the ages of 3 and 12. You can buy tickets on the circus’ website.
Other WA shows
After the Olympia shows wrap up, Shoestring will head to Orting and Vancouver.
“We’re doubling our tour and really feeling like a traveling show this year,” Laumb said.
The Orting show in particular will be special for Laumb, who’s from Pierce County.
“The tent is going to be up like 10 minutes from my house, which is really sweet. So it means a lot to kind of get to bring it to my hometown,” Laumb said.
The Orting shows will run from July 11 to 20. From there, the circus will head to Vancouver, with shows scheduled from July 25 to Aug. 3.
Laumb said the circus doesn’t have any concrete plans to expand beyond the four-city schedule this summer, but the owners hope to add a few more stops over the coming years.
“We want to make sure we do these four towns in a way that feels good for the artist, feels good for us... But I think all of us hope to keep expanding it by a little bit every year. It might be one more town a year, two more towns a year,” Laumb said.