Performing the Political: Lessons in Playful Protest from Berlin

We are back in Berlin! The vibrant neighbourhoods—a joyous mash of cultures, graffiti, and street art, with welcoming spaces for cycling and street life—are simply bursting with inspiration as they welcome back the Nomadic Rebel Clown Academy (NRCA).

This is our fifth NRCA training. Hilary Ramsden and I have been honing our pedagogy, shaping a journey for learners who want to combine and experiment with clowning, activism, street theatre, and public space. We have been invited by Clown4All, a social clowning project set up by the passionate folks at Cabuwazi Circus. This group has been training and performing together for the last year with mentors including Sabine Choucair of Clown Me In and Peter Sweet. So it is with delightful anticipation that we meet the group: sixteen playful souls joining us in a bright room in Berlin's Kunstquartier Bethanien—an incredible building housing dance, mime, music, and fine art.

Our first day focuses on the "simple clown." This is a chance for Hilary and me to get to know the group and their level of understanding through play. With a year of training already, they are deeply connected, possess excellent complicity, and have a lovely sense of care for each other. In this work, we want to foster a real sensitivity as clowns: staying curious, alert, receptive, and doing less. These clowns already possess these qualities, and we’re excited for our journey together.

Our 6-day learning journey broadly includes these key elements:

• Clown play
• The Politics of Public Space
• Working with political, environmental, and social issues
• Choreographies & ensemble movement
• Games to create physical scores and actions
• Researching our contexts – the history of political clowning, the tools of the activist clown, and inspiration from other activist clowns and creative movements
• Working collectively – decision-making, shared creative and political expression
• Working individually – creating actions that express our heart's deepest yearning for the world and the changes we want to see

We work outside every day, getting participants used to being in public space—testing its boundaries, noticing when we are invisible or visible, and learning how to negotiate different architectures, rules, and encounters with the public. We layer on the issues, using stories and games related to themes that are important to us. These actions, big and small, covered immigration, housing, connection, authoritarianism, the right to protest, surveillance, community, and hope.

Our larger collective actions took place on day five. By now, the participants have spent considerable time in the streets and developed a shared movement and devising language in the studio. After a creative action design session, the clowns coalesced around three main ideas. With their themes in mind, they created games, choreographies, interactions, and invitations, preparing costumes and props as needed. This process is quick, heading to the streets within a couple of hours because the real learning happens out there.

Eighteen clowns cycled in convoy to Alexanderplatz, a busy yet spacious public square with shops, restaurants, and transport hubs. The groups separated for final preparations and began to explore their games. Hilary and I followed separately to observe them and the public's response.

One group called out the EU immigration procedure, highlighting the absurdity and meaninglessness of bureaucratic measures and checks. Five clowns in suits carried a sign saying ‘EU wants YOU!’ Their play demonstrated an immigration check, inviting clowns and then the public to apply for the right to remain. They used a measuring tape to check if applicants ‘fit,’ declaring the criteria ridiculous. The bureaucrat clown then made a decision—‘application accepted!’ or, more often, ‘application declined!’ While the public watching from benches seemed engaged, few accepted the invitation to play. Perhaps the possibility of rejection was too intimidating, or the tourist-heavy demographic wasn't the right audience. It was a learning moment about the clarity of our message and who we need to be talking to.

Another group worked to celebrate the unappreciated labour force in public space: musicians, street artists, tram drivers, cleaners, and even police. The clowns sought them out across the square and in shops, applauding them, offering to keep them cool, clean their shoes, or even take a seat (as one clown got on all fours to offer themselves). It was a feel-good action, and bemused workers smiled at this unexpected appreciation. However, there was also trepidation, as people who are working have limited time to engage. This challenge in design led to some moments of rejection—a real learning moment in this work.

A final group seemed to say nothing at all. They protested with blank signs, their passionate outrage expressed entirely in gibberish. They marched across the square, found a position, and one clown stepped out to express their demands, repeated by the chorus behind. At one point, another clown played the police; oppressive tactics like arrests and pepper spray became a slapstick routine with the clowns coming out on top. For those who stopped to watch, the clowns asked what they would protest for. “World Peace” and “Trans Rights,” answered a mother and daughter. The clowns offered them tiny blank placards and invited them to join. This group demonstrated a powerful tool of clowning: playful ambivalence. By leaving their signs blank, the spectator could project their own meaning. It could speak to protestors being silenced, issues being censored, or the feeling that we’ve said it all and there’s nothing left to say.

This lack of a message proved useful when the police stopped to ask what we were doing and if we represented a particular cause. It was a delightfully confusing moment for them when we could produce signs that said absolutely nothing. Playful ambivalence creates space for the spectator to engage, get curious, and question who holds the power, all while retaining a light sense of humour.

These three distinct actions offered a powerful live case study in the nuances of activist clowning. The first group learned that a clear, targeted message must also consider its audience to avoid alienation or irrelevance. The second discovered that even well-intentioned, joyful interventions can be complicated by the realities of people's time and space. The third harnessed the unique power of playful ambivalence to engage curiosity, circumvent authority, and create a open-ended dialogue. Together, they demonstrated that there is no single script for this work. The true learning lies in the doing—in stepping into the public sphere with a curious heart, a critical mind, and the willingness to adapt, fail, and play again. Our time in Berlin was a vibrant reminder that clowning is not an escape from the world's complexities, but a uniquely powerful way to engage with them, one red nose and rebellious gesture at a time.

Photo by Marcel Wittstadt