Here in Hamilton ON we have officially kicked off our 2026/2027 season with a great presentation from a locally known children’s entertainer Scott Wilkins (aka Rumple the Clown).
Before introducing Scott, Our President had one piece of unfinished business. Last year he honored the members involved with our annual charity show with a plaque, but one member, Barry O’Neil had missed that meeting and so he was presented with the award.
Then, on to our guest speaker, Scott Wilkins. Now, as alluded to above, Scott is a children’s performer, so he has chosen to perform as a clown (but he does include magic in his shows). But it becomes very obvious, very early on, that his actual background is in theater.
He was born in England, where he studied theater. In 2010 he found an opportunity to move to Hong Kong to teach English. Scott and a friend began developing some ideas on what they could sell the school boards there as far as unique methodologies to make it fun for the kids.
This quickly evolved into clowns (with magic) and puppets, a traveling ‘Theater Bus’, and the business name of Rumple and Friends (which is the business he still operates), and they became the largest English Entertainment company in Hong Kong. More personally, he also met and married his wife while there.
Then COVID hit.
A very difficult time for entertainers, as we all know. Scott and Nichol moved back to Brantford ON to be closer to family and Scott found some work, but in 2022 Scott saw an opportunity to get back into children’s entertainment and went back to it full time in 2024.
Scott offers a whole host of services: his shows, disco parties, drama classes, circus training, theater, glow in the dark soccer, and much more. He spoke about his philosophy for entertaining, much of which centered around engagement of the audience.
We learned a lot from Scott – highly recommended.
Rene Chouinard
