3 Lessons learned from Medical Clowning

It was my dear friend Rita who approached me to become a clown, obviously she saw something in me that resonated — she would often say “God Aaron, you’re such a clown”. I had seen her car with the understated magnetic car sign on the car door; a red nose with the Clown Doctors New Zealand logo.

Rita and I had chatted during breaks — she is a masseuse and I at the time was Life Coaching — a mix of NLP, Hypnosis and what I call Structural Psychology. When Rita asked me I was a little shocked and somewhat surprised; I replied, “but I’m not a doctor, don’t you have to be a doctor?” Of course I had heard of the well known American clowning doctor Patch Adams, an inspired medical doctor who used comedy as part of his medical strategy, a character etched into our memories when portrayed by the late Robin Williams in the movie ‘Patch Adams’. But how could a non-doctor be a Clown Doctor, surely that was the prerequisite: not so. So I said yes.

I had done a few standup comedy gigs and loved the idea of improvisation as a way of communicating the idea of the egoless self. I had also played a few improv open-mic gigs where you take your instrument — mine a violin — and jam with the band. But clowning, that was new, and very exciting.

I had to take an audition and I had no idea what to do. I had a boiler suit that I wore when painting at home and wearing that truly horrible khaki abomination, all covered in paint and oil, I played the role of an old retired tinkerer, in my garage, fumbling about for what felt like hours with some tools and my “wireless” (the radio). It was all going well until Thomas, the CEO of Clown Doctors said: “OK Stop, go out and come in again. This time stop for a moment and just connect with us.” I entered again, and again, and again, and then at some point Thomas said: “OK lets chat”

So, I auditioned, We talked, and I was hired. Easy. Not so!

“There are as many clowns as there are human beings.

There is one way to stand while there are infinite ways to fall.

Intelligence is limited.

Stupidity is infinite.

The pedagogical approach integrates the Pedagogy of movement-based theatre of Jacques Lecoq with different principles and practices of physical and emotional awareness. In particular: Gestalt, Reichian Analysis, Bionergetics, Taoism and Process Work. The result is a deep artistic and emotional work, involving the body in a dynamic of play, technical training, awareness and performing folly.”

This pedagogy is simultaneously an artistic process and a personal process.Giovanni Fusetti http://www.helikos.com

Clowning is not acting, it is not clowning in the circus, in the juggling balls sense of the word. It is not ‘IT’ — although we suffer greatly at the monochromatic image that ‘IT’ and its contemporaries have generated. Clowning is a path of deep discovery. Clowning is a window to a journey of considerable effort and requires some juggling — psychological juggling; let me explain.

Lesson 1

STOP

Remember at my rehearsal when Thomas said “Stop, go out and come in again..” and said this over and over. I did not know it at the time but I was learning the 1st rule and the most essential strategy in clowning; STOP.

True story

My clown partner and I had just come onto the children’s ward, it was 10 am and as soon as we came through the double doors we heard the screaming. In clown my first response was ‘Wow!’, where’s that coming from. Because we would always walk the entire word before we entered any rooms we set off to find the source of the screaming. IN one of the single patient rooms was a young boy with his head back screaming. His mother holding his hand, head down and crying. It was all a bit grim.

I headed down to the nurses station, whipped off my nose (we do the when we need to have a ‘real’ conversation) and found out that the boy had a broken femur which had just been reset. I ask if we could go in and the nurse replied — good luck.

Replacing our noses my clown partner and I (we always work in two’s) headed back to the boys room. In clown I was so excited and I had no idea what was going to happen and I knew we could help. I knocked on the window and the mum immediately looked up, a little confused and yet possibly relieved at the interruption, she motioned us in.

I stepped inside and walked straight to the end of the screaming boys bed and stopped… and fascinated by the sound of the screaming, until finally, maybe 30 seconds, the boy noticed this stupid looking clown at stopped screaming. He took a deep breath and was about to start again when (remember I am in clown) I yelled “I don’t think you dong it loud enough… you need to do it much more loudly!” To which the boy responded by breathing out and laughing… What had been at least an hour of screaming with pain (I cannot even imagine what that would have felt like) he stopped and laughed at the two silly looking clown at the end of the bed.

My clown partner and I started to holler in the most ridiculous and musical ways — even mum was laughing. The boy had been distracted now for at least 10 minutes when with impeccable times the rest of his family turned up; our opportunity to exit.

STOP!

In clown I do not know what I am going to do especially in a stressful situation like that one, so in the first instance I stop. We all stop. Silence is one of the most powerful tools we have and it is because it seldom happens in our modern lives. Silence is almost alien to us; we have constant stimulation and when there is nothing on the outside we fill the gaps with internal dialogue.

Silence from a clown is even more bizarre. To see a clown enter a room and simply stand silent for a few moments, even a minute, is intensely mystifying and inspires the mind to get very curious. In clown, I get to watch and wait; silence is pregnant and will always I’ve birth to something new, unique, unexpected and that is the fuel for insured play.

Lesson 2

Think and think not. Do and do not. Juggling the rules.

There is an inherent paradox in medical clowning most of which is generated by the context in which Medical Clowning takes place. The context is clinical, either a hospital which is most often a children’s ward or the medical wards in a rest home.

The challenge is to balance the rules against the nature of a clowns psychology — if there is such a thing. You see, a clown in the purest sense has its own personality, likes, loves, hates and perspective of the world, and… this can all change at any given moment. The clown is creative, spontaneous, inventive, emotional, compassionate and more. Essentially the clown plays. There is little thinking, just playing: and all doing is play. The play is generally unprescribed improvisational play, and because we are clowns, we inherently fail at most of what we do, and we can fail with epic emotional consequences, which of course needs to have boundaries in a medical environment.

So, entering a hospital room for example, we are immediately aware of the context, the medical apparatus, the bed, the patient and family, the TV blaring in the corner, the age of the patient, the emotional state of the patient and family and so so much more. With all that, we also bring the rules: don’t touch the floor, don’t drop anything on the floor, sterilise before and after each room, don’t break stuff, try not to thrown stuff, ask for permission before touching their stuff… and more. And then we can play.

This is when the clown really comes to life. The clown is desperate for love and attention, connection and fun and will do just about anything to get its needs met. I am constantly surprised at what I will do when in Clown and how epic my failures are.

There is a constant juggle between boundaries and play, spontaneity and constraint and in so many ways this is how I have noticed my life has been. There are so many rules, protocols, ways to behave that can potentially hamper our ability to know who we are and how to live a life that feels authentic and fulfilling, and this is why clowning has had such a powerful influence on my life.

Thinking is overrated. Think and think not — know the rules, the boundaries and what the general expectations are and then switch it off and play. There is something very earnest about our inner clown. It knows when it’s too much. Once it knows the rules, like the great artist with just a charcoal pencil to work with, miracles can still happen.

Do and do not. Clowning is not all about doing. Many of the greatest clowns; Chaplin, Keaton and some of the best standup comedians, know what the power of ‘doing nothing’ has. Dong nothing creates space for curiosity to kick in. The fuel of all initiative, creativity and inspiration is curiosity. The clown builds a world and through both action and inaction teases out the imaginative power of the audience… pure joy emerges

Lesson 3

So much can be said without speaking. (This is the hard one for me.)

The clown is all about emotion. The fleeting impulses of emotion relating directly to the clowns perception of the immediate environment. Everything is so fluid and so full of monumental potential. here is nothing that cannot be played with or turned into a story or, and most importantly, a problem. As a clown I relish problems and want to fix them but cannot because I am a clown. Thats where the fun is.

The trick is and what can make for the most exquisite moments is the wordless reactions, the emotional peaks and troughs and how they are so big and so wonderful and how they start and stop with remarkable speed.

“Failure is unimportant. It takes courage to make a fool of yourself” Charlie Chaplin

A clowns emotions in the real world is like toffee in a candy makers hands, pulled and twisted, squeezed and teased and there is no letup. Watching Buster Keaton movies, noticing his expressions; disbelief, horror, relief, love, concern, confusion and that blank “what just happened” expression are such powerful insights into his internal world.

Often in clown I am ‘pre-verbal’ — so open, explorative, receptive and profoundly curious and at the same time I just don’t know what will happen when. Failure is the key to learning and yet the clown takes so long to learn, if it ever happens. At the same time, like Keatons clown, the failure has an element of what I like to think of as ‘Whimsical Zen’. What happens happens — it will all work out, and it will often work out so much better if we hold our tongues and let the heart play.

“Silence is of the gods; only monkeys chatter.” … Buster Keaton

The boy with the broken femur was given time to respond to our presence and our silence gave space for everyone to notice that something had changed — in quite a unique way; there were two clowns in the room.

Silence is a place from where possibility emerges — a meditation of sorts fuelling compelling action and an opportunity to feel something that is both familiar and surreal.

Do a web search and find out if there are clown doctors or medical clowns in your part of the world and get involved — free your heart, mind and body, and make magic.