Youth & Social Circus

YOUTH & SOCIAL CIRCUS PROJECTS

Circus Central BTEC Diploma in Circus 2016 -18
I have been teaching on the newly developed professional training programmes for Circus Central. I have taught modules on Physical Theatre, Site Specific work and Making performance as well as directing shows with students in 2016 & 2017

La Bonche Family Circus 2013
Research project with Five Rings Youth Circus exploring the circus heritage of the North East of England. The project culminated in a show in which I devised an act with young people, and a newspaper and video I created to document the journey.

Clowning Around Ghent 2015
10-day Clown Training Project and youth exchange in Belgium. I taught workshops in Clown to young people from Italy, Belgium, Scotland, Germany, Estonia & Sweden and directed them in outdoor performances for the Ghent Arts Festival

Swallows Foundation Remix Project 2013
Teaching Social Circus to over 30 'change makers' from across South Africa, to introduce them to circus skills and to collectively work towards the National Arts Festival Parade in Grahamstown

Fairground of Fishy Feats 2014 a Five Ring Youth Circus circus show commissioned by Juice Festival, based on the book, ‘The Boy who Swam with Piranhas’. I worked as a movement director for the show and created animations based on the work of a young artist to accompany the show.

Circonnection & ENCI 2012-16
I was involved in documenting these two European Partnership Circus and Street Arts Training programmes. This involved developing the attending Europe-wide trainings to document the projects including creation of websites, writing blogs and taking & collating photos.

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