The place: northern France. The time: somewhere in the 13th century. Life is hard, for minstrels as for everyone else. Theirs is not an easy lot as, like other entertainers, they travel from castle to village, from tavern to town square, relying on their knowledge of music and spectacle to entertain their audience. They must be familiar with a wide range of music for all occasions and be able to play at a moment's notice, earning barely enough to live on. To make things worse, they have a bad reputation, associated as they are with the low life of the taverns and secular, often disrespectful songs of love and satire. Forced to spend their lives as poor wanderers, the best they can hope for is to find refuge in the house of a rich nobleman with an interest in art and music.

In a show produced in 1997, Strada recreated the endless quest of the wandering minstrels in a show that combined music with the art of street entertainment. The program is based on the dance songs, reverdies and pastourelles, composed by the poet-composers of northern France known as the trouvères, who inherited the tradition of their counterparts in the South, the troubadours. "May your pleasure in hearing them know no end!"