ROBYN HAMBROOK
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Reclaim the Streets occupation, 14 May 1995, Camden High Street, London, UK, photo © Nick Cobbing
Reclaim the Streets, M41 Party, 13 July 1996, stilt walker concealing members of the group drillingholes into the asphalt to plant trees, photo © Nick Cobb.

The importance of saying ‘yes’

So often our protest spaces are about saying ‘no’. No to climate change, no to social injustice, no to new airports being built in a time of climate collapse. In the 1990s ‘Reclaim the Streets’ was a UK movement that opposed the privatisation of the roads by the car. They believed that public space is commons and needed to be taken back. Influenced by the rave scene, carnival and the idea of pleasure they would occupy the streets and motorways with wild street parties. In one infamous motorway occupation, performers on stilts wearing giant skirts concealed people with jackhammers digging into the road beneath to plant trees.
 
“This is pre-figurative politics!” says Jay Jordan. “Instead of saying no, we don’t want cars in the street, we say here is what a street looks like without cars. We prefigure the future in the now. Instead of having motorways how about having forests.”
 
So having a ‘yes’ is as important as a no. Especially so in clowning. The clown collaborates, the clown says yes. Saying ‘yes’ is an important theatrical principle, key to improvisational performance. A ‘yes and’ helps the games to flow whereas a ‘no’ stops and idea dead in its track, shuts down creativity and development,
 
Out on the street, the ability of a group to build trust and work together is supported by knowing that you are in tune. Saying ‘yes’ fosters that. It builds complicity in a group, allows games to flow. It allows the world to affect it while fostering collaboration and trust. A rogue clown not attuned to the group, with their own agenda could prove dangerous on the front lines of protest. 
ABOUT ROBYN
Robyn is a Bristol-based director, teacher and performer. With over 20 years experience she is a passionate practitioner of clowning, physical theatre, circus and street arts. She has a MA in Circus Directing, a Diploma of Physical Theatre Practice and trained with a long line of inspiring teachers including Holly Stoppit, Peta Lily, Giovanni Fusetti, Jon Davison, Zuma Puma and Deanna Fleysha.
Robyn has collaborated with companies including Let’s Circus, The Sexual Health Circus and Whispering Wood Folk and performed with acclaimed physical theatre companies including, Derevo, Akhe, Oceanallover, and Gappad as well as her own award-winning company, Fun in the Oven Theatre.
During the pandemic in 2020, Robyn set up The Online Clown Academy with Holly Stoppit and developed a series of Zoom Clown Courses. Robyn’s research, started during her Masters, has been exploring the meeting point of clowning and activism, online, in the real world and with international collaborators. With this drive to explore political edges of her work she has also dived back into the world of the Bouffon; training with Jaime Mears, Bim Mason, Nathaniel Justiniano, Eric Davis, Tim Licata, Al Seed and the grand master Bouffon-himself; Philippe Gaulier. She has also set up the Laboratory of the Un-beautiful; a collaboration with Deborah Antoinette Bard, exploring the bouffon & grotesque with womxn theatre makers.

contact me
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  • Home
  • PROJECTS
    • Clown Congress
    • The Trickster Laboratory
    • Sexual Health Circus
    • Street Art Porfolio
    • Rebel Clowns
    • Canary
    • Arthur's Odyssey
    • The Vampire Rabbit
    • Interactive Theatre
    • Youth & Social Circus
  • Teaching
    • The Activist Clown Toolkit
    • Clown Experiments
    • Clown Soup
    • Bouffon Weekend Intensive
  • Training
  • Clowning & Activism Blog
    • Tools of the Activist Clown