My good friend Robert Stredder, who has died aged 82, was a road theatre performer and the founder in 1976 of the London-to-Brighton bike experience. The occasion was conceived initially as a enjoyable annual taking place, however is now a serious fundraiser for plenty of charities.
Throughout the early Nineteen Eighties Robert co-founded European Theatre of Struggle, a bunch that toured Europe with a model of anti-nuclear road theatre, travelling, as they put it, “from Glastonbury to the Milky Method”. He additionally carried out nearly as much as the tip of his life within the Theatre Des Bicyclettes troupe at festivals and occasions round Britain.
Robert was born in Shipston-on Stour, Warwickshire, the son of Henry, an accountant, and Doreen, who had been a major college trainer earlier than her marriage. Robert was a boarder at Malvern faculty in Worcestershire, the place within the naval cadet power marching band he discovered drumming expertise. He took a regulation diploma at Birmingham College, then studied English and drama at Brighton College.
Initially, from 1966, he made his dwelling as an English trainer in Tottenham, north London, whereas pursuing creative pursuits in his spare time. Attending the Isle of Wight pageant in 1970, he was captured kissing a girlfriend in a newspaper {photograph} that was featured within the Guardian’s That’s Me In The Image. He recalled that he had met the band Hawkwind in Brighton, and that they’d “invited me to hitch them backstage on the Isle of Wight pageant … as a kind of further.” Nonetheless, he missed out on the chance as a result of he fell asleep ready to listen to Jimi Hendrix.
In later years he made enthusiastic musical contributions to stay performances by the Unimaginable String Band and the Fallout Marching Band, primarily enjoying the congas and snare drum.
In 1971 Robert resigned from educating and started to work for numerous arts firms, surviving on efficiency charges and small grants. Along with his long-term associate, the Irish performer and dancer Jackie Bardwell, he turned a driving power in a commune at Groundwell Farm in Blunsdon, on the outskirts of Swindon, which turned a hub for neighborhood arts within the 80s and 90s. I first met Robert and Jackie once we have been members of the early radical arts group Motion Area within the mid-70s. It was with Jackie and, amongst others, the Time Bandits actor David Rappaport, that Robert additionally established European Theatre of Struggle.
From 1992 onwards, because it turned tougher to earn a dwelling via his theatrical actions, Robert ran a small gardening enterprise, Paxton Landscapes, and continued with that till his 70s.
However he stored up his performing, and late in life made the tabloids with a headline in 2015 within the Each day Mirror that learn: “Fireplace-juggling OAP banned from acting at Christmas lights switch-on amid security fears.” Prohibited from fire-juggling at Swindon Outdated City’s Christmas lights, he ignored the order and went forward anyway. He had a subversive and idiosyncratic open-heartedness in efficiency, as in life, and a delicate, anarchistic and hedonistic nature.
Robert’s ultimate public efficiency was in 2023 on the Cropredy folks pageant, the place he entertained the viewers along with his tales and percussive infusions.
He’s survived by Jackie and their sons, Erin and Lorien.
