There are so many other places clowns should go, Dan reasoned.So many other places where people need to have joy and levity.

Months went by and I got caught up in the hem and haw of everyday life. Work, eat, sleep, get the art fix when possible but focus on survival. And then the call came. Clown Zero’s response team is going to St. Joseph’s Family Center in December. Want to come?

I responded with a nervous, Of course, donned some striped tights and my red nose, and to St. Joseph’s Family Center I went. I met Dan Griffiths and his friends Anka, a Polish woman and Jim, her American husband in their van around the corner. The staff at Saint Joe’s had requested that we wear no makeup. Anka and Jim looked ridiculous in a strange array of mismatched polka dots and plaid, while Griffiths looked almost non-human in oversized red fleece footy pajamas and the largest clown nose I had ever seen. He hand crafted the nose himself and has affectionately named it, The Sack.

In the van, we discussed our plan of action. Anka was the only one of us who would speak, and she would do so only in Polish. There might be fifteen kids inside and there might be two. Either way, our instructions were the same. Play with them.

Saint Joseph’s Family Center provides homeless families and homeless pregnant women with 24 hour shelter, three meals a day, and a variety of support services designed to help them address the issues of homelessness and work towards a position of economic self-sufficiency and stable housing. Entertaining folks in hard and desperate times can be tricky. You don’t want to condescend. You don’t want to be better than. You want to be there with them, and if possible, exalt the them to a higher status than yourself.

We made our entrance. There were about four kids, ranging in age from around 5 to 12. They had just opened their holiday gifts, and a young boy was playing with his new toy fire truck on the red and gold carpet in the community room. Jim approached him, bent down, and went, Woowoo! imitating a siren. The boy laughed. Dan began entertaining a family with some bizarre finger tricks. I danced with a little girl. Anka, acting as ringleader, kept trying to line us all up to sing Christmas carols. I talked through my kazoo until she took it away from me, at which point I remember lying down on the floor and pretending to nap until a large child jumped on top of me. The four of us, along with the residents and staff of Saint Joseph’s Family Center, created a raucous, festive feeling for a little over an hour. By the end of our time, we had not only the children but also a few adults out of their seats and dancing. One child wouldn’t dance until I started acting like a chicken. He readily joined me in my strange barnyard dance.

When the party was over and we four clowns shuffled out the door, I remember feeling light, as if the people at Saint Joseph’s had given me something, instead of the other way around. I did not feel like I had done any meaningful charity, like I had gone out of my way to lift the disadvantaged out of destitution. The folks at Saint Joe’s had not taken what I had to give. We had had an equal exchange. We had shared joy, and that, I guess, is what it’s all about.

-Harvey Rabbit

Although this is a reflection of our real lived experiences, this is also kind of an antithesis to the real lived experience of want and need.

What I am discovering as I work more with ClownZero is that it is this antithesis that provides the potential for connection with our communities in need. Everyone needs and everyone has had the experience of not having what he or she needs. To turn this complex situation into one that we can all see clearly and even laugh at is where freedom lies in social clowning. To bring the serious into the realm of the ridiculous so that we can examine it, not cerebrally but intuitively and emotionally is where I find myself most healed by the work. We learn this way that laughing is not just the expression of something purely stupid or goofy. We all know that the funniest things are sometimes the things that are most true, and nothing is more true that desire, want, need and even suffering. Confusion, pain, anger and frustration are also things that can be soothed by the balm of laughter through a real or surreal examination of their causes.

People often assume that clowns are there for the children, and of course we are! But a clown that can really connect with a child in a way that empowers them can also easily connect with anyone to play and wade through the often-difficult nature of being a human being via the ridiculous.

Clowns have seemingly simple problems: they can’t find anything, they lose control of their partners, they don’t have a sandwich when they want one, they step on each other’s feet and forget the words to songs. But these problems if we step back and look at them for a minute, reveal themselves to be the same problems that every real person grapples with, and they range from the light and silly to the deep and tragic.

When ClownZero visited the St. Joseph’s Family Center for Thanksgiving last year, we entered an environment of many different emotions and human experiences. There were perhaps a total of 10-12 families celebrating thanksgiving with a meal and we had been invited to come do some walk around and connecting with the kids and adults while they ate and socialized. The air was ripe with potential for the hilarious, but as always, my heart was fairly pounding as I took in the reality of the situation. I am here to entertain and induce laughter, but also I am here to have a human experience with a group of people who are suffering for any number of reasons on this weighted family holiday. To push forth through the reality without ignoring it in order to get to the core of funny is so tricky, so scary and so rewarding. A dear friend of ours recently shared with us a quote that came to mind in this particular moment: “Risk everything for love”. I think that is what we have to do to connect without diminishing the experience of real suffering. We have to risk everything to laugh in the face of sadness and grief. We have to be willing to share our own humanity with everyone we meet. As clowns of course this is essential, because we are already proposing an altered state by our physical appearance. We come in and demand an alternative reality. We must be willing to provide the platform and the bravery it takes to rise above the confines of our daily lives. And more than anything, I think that is what I learned to see at St. Joseph’s Family Center last November: that my daily desires for acceptance, love, connection and safety are what fuel my connection to others who also want. It is not a condition reserved for the poor or under-privileged to have need, so we can all share this experience. And we should.

Who are the superheroes you ask!

The Superheroes are a group of activists and citizens from all over the country who converge a few times a year to ride bikes in superhero costumes through the United States. Their mission is to serve the different communities they visit in any way they can when they arrive. That’s it! No political agenda! No financial incentive! This is really just community service, peace activism and dress up! You can find out more information about the superheroes by doing a google search or asking around until you find a real live superhero. There are lots! You never know, you might already know one.

The possibility Alliance is a place that grew out of the superhero idea/reality. It is an 80- acre piece of land dedicated to the practice of radical simplicity, peace making and sustainability. Check out this article to read more about what those things really mean to the folks at the PA:

http://planetsave.com/2008/10/01/radical-simplicity-living-car-free-petroleum-free-and-electricity-free-at-the-possibility-alliance/

Oh and this one too:

Neat huh?

So Dan and I met Ethan (one of the founding members of the Possibility Alliance) because we used to live at Dancing Rabbit Eco-Village, which is about a 45-minute drive from the Possibility Alliance. We got together just as fellow communitarians to share ideas and learn from each other and we discovered that our mission to bring humanitarian clowning to all parts of the world for the relief of different communities and individuals in crisis was really beautifully in line with the mission and principles of the Possibility Alliance. So the three of us sat down for about 2 hours last June and drew out a rough sketch of a weeklong workshop culminating in a public performance that would benefit the community of LaPlata Missouri.

Then, in August, 20 Students from all over the country and all over the world (we had a student from Montreal and one of our students lives part of the year in Thailand!) gathered under a giant elm tree and started a very condensed and intense week of learning, laughing, vulnerability, service and peace making that was truly spectacular.

Throughout the week we practiced the absurdity and vulnerability of clown through physical exercises led by Dan. I taught some classes that focused on the emotional and vocal realms in performance, and Ethan gave us inspired examples of all the different kinds of peace activism one can practice. He also led us through a very moving and hilarious superhero initiation as the sun went down and we all turned into otherworldly silhouettes in our first incarnations of our superhero characters. Quite a sight to behold I’m sure.

Towards the end of the week, we spent on a day of superhero/clown activism /reality bonking /service in Kirksville, Missouri where we visited the Twin Pines Adult Care Center for a performance of clowning, acrobatics, music and juggling. We then headed out to the Truman State Campus for some reality bonking…We showed up in different classrooms unannounced…we started impromptu dance parties in the courtyards. We asked people to tell us their dreams and danced and sang for them to come true!

It was quite a day. We were all very tired superheroes upon our return to the Possibility Alliance.

Then on Saturday we performed our final show at the Silver Rails event center in La Plata. The show was billed as the “Clown Extravaganza Ice cream Social” and it was for the benefit of the Friends of La Plata Preservation Society. There were literally 20 gallons of homemade ice cream at this thing. And about 20 sheet cakes as well. The men and women from the preservation society all got together to make the cake and ice cream. It was delicious… the whole experience.

The show was totally packed full of really great acts put together by our clown superhero students. In the middle of the final show I remember thinking “wow, they are really good!” I don’t know why I was surprised, but I had a genuine sense of being truly impressed with them. They really got it! And the audience loved it too! They were a joy to perform for. Oh yeah, there were about 200 people at this show! La Plata has a total population of 1500, so we did good I think.

And that very evening, while we mingled and stuffed ice cream in our faces and started to clean up, some of our clowns and superheroes snuck out of the Silver Rails and walked down the street to the to the La Plata Nursing Home where they sang songs and shared stories with the residents. It turns out that they were supposed to come to our show but their bus broke down or some such inconvenience and they couldn’t make it. So we got a call and half of us decided to bring the show to them afterwards. I hear it was very well received and lots of fun for our clowns.

It was a fantastic week, all of our students where incredible performers and beautiful superheroes. And everyone we met along the way was so generous and supportive of what we were doing. It felt really great to bring such absurdness and levity and joy to the people you see everyday and never get to connect with. Somehow deciding that you are a superhero or a clown can alter the universe just enough to connect, play and discover things about your world and your community that you never thought you needed to know.

A warm thanks to all the clowns and I hope we can do it again next year!

If you’re interested in the Superhero Clown Camp or the Superhero Bike Ride, please email us at dan@clownzero.org or contact the Possibility Alliance @

Possibility alliance
28408 Frontier Lane
La Plata, MO 63549
Telephone 660-332-4094

Regards,

Danielle