ROBYN HAMBROOK
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  • Home
  • COURSES
    • Comedy Summer School
    • Clown Soup
  • PROJECTS
    • Clown Congress
    • Clown Congress Catering Manager
    • Nomadic Rebel Clown Academy
    • Sealine Confidential
    • The Trickster Laboratory
    • Sexual Health Circus
    • Street Art Porfolio
    • Rebel Clowns
    • Canary
    • Arthur's Odyssey
    • The Vampire Rabbit
    • Interactive Theatre
    • Youth & Social Circus
    • The Online Clown Academy
  • Training
  • Clowning & Activism Blog
    • Tools of the Activist Clown
ROBYN HAMBROOK

Tactical

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Tactical

For Jay the aim was to take carnivalesque elements from Reclaim the Streets and tactical frivolity groups of the 90s and the idea of not looking like protesters into direct action. They weren’t simply going to entertain, instead take the logic of the clown into direct action.


CIRCA’s costume of army fatigues were tactical as well. “My jacket had 16 pockets” said Jay, “And when police stop and search you they have to take everything out, more pockets takes longer and holds them up”. For Jay arrested, as his clown persona Colonel Klepto at a protest against an Arms Fair selling arms during the Iraq war (2004) this provided an opportunity to mock authority as an increasingly absurd selection of objects emerged from his pockets; pigs of different sizes (a nod to the derogatory slang for police), various dildos and most unsettling of all, a string of bones. “It’s death”, replied Jay in response to the cop’s uneasy question of what he was looking at. “I take death with me everywhere.”


The key tactic of the clown army was to replace confrontation with confusion. “Police know how to deal with confrontation” says Jay “but find it harder to deal with confusion”. And confuse them they did as groups of riot cops had to deal with the arrival of clowns who had come to help them secure the area. “So by putting ourselves with authority but then saying oh, why can’t we do this, oh but we’re here to help you, don’t you want our help? It completely wrong-footed authority,” says Hilary. “The police just didn’t know what to do with clowns. We heard voices on the police radio saying, “The Clowns are organising, the clowns are organising, over and out.” 

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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, Bim Mason, Jon Davison, Zuma Puma, Lucy Hopkins and John Wright.
Over the past five years she has been exploring the meeting point of clowning and a deep desire to address the injustices in the world. This specialism has developed through her Masters Research ‘Small Circus Acts of Resistance’, on the streets and in protests with the Bristol Rebel Clowns and in research residencies with The Trickster Laboratory.
Robyn’s Activist Clown research has led to collaborations with Jay Jordan (Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination, France), Clown Me In (Beirut), LM Bogad (US), Hilary Ramsden (Greece) and international Tricksters; ‘The Yes Men’ (US).
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.
Keen to explore the intersection of clowning and politics, Robyn is driven to create collaborative, research spaces, testing and pushing the limits of the artform to create new knowledge and methodologies for her industry and strengthen partnerships for future work. Some of her most recent collaborations and teaching projects have included the Nomadic Rebel Clown Academy (5-day Activist Clown Training), The Laboratory of the Un-beautiful (Feminist Grotesque Bouffon Training for Womxn Theatre Makers) and the Clown Congress (annual gathering of clowns, activists & academics collectively exploring what it means to be a clown in this current era)
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Photo by HeardinLondon Photography