Healthcare Clowns ​Workshops

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• Here you will find a list of themes for Healthcare Clowns Workshops.
• A workshop can consist of one or more theme(s) to serve your organization's needs.
• The themes are fully flexible and customizable.
• Other themes are also available, you can contact Ami.

Clownplay - Fundamentals

From the basics clown-state to building clown-play

Taking the time to revisit the art of clown's fundamentals can be a refreshing, rich and empowering experience. The Basic Clown state, the enhanced presence, the "yes, and", the play of emotions and body, the silliness, idiocy that emerges spontaneously, and the language of the clown play.
The clown play, among other things, is based on the emotional journey of the performer through the plot. However, this play must be transposed to the clown language: from emotion to motion, movement, attitudes, voice and words. 
From there, it expands into countless possibilities. The practice is done first alone and then with a partner.

The Clown's Body - Emotion and Motion

The emotional component and its physical consequence are a major part of clown play.
This theme focuses on :

• the various emotional states
• "Physication": the play of physical expression of the emotion
• consequences of the emotional state in clown: how does the clown perceive, reacts and behaves with himself, the audience and the world
• extrapolation: how far can the emotional play go, and in what forms

The Clown Duo

Weaving relationship, action and situations into building the improvised clown play

The practice and apprenticeship of constructing the clown improvisation (generally for clowns, and specifically for healthcare clowns).
Using a series of strategies and tools, offering the performers more freedom, ease and creativity while having a rich and coherent plot:

• Complicity between performers, through listening and synchronicity
• The Ping-Pong, focus, major-minor, and its deeper form: the "Big Eight"
• Deepening the coordination between the two performers (the "Pilots") during the play
• Receiving the partner's proposition with an amplified "yes-and"
• The art of activating the partner through propositions
• Identifying the relationship and building the play on it
• Improv devising strategies for the play construction
• Using the Origami paradigm, a powerful play construction tool, to devise play while improvising

The Power of Power

Status & Power Relationships
​in Play and Clown

Exploring the various forms of Power relationships and other options of contrast in the duo.

• "Status Academy" : The dynamics and strategies of play with status relationship in acting
• the adaptation of these dynamics to the world of clowns. (who attempted to graduate from the Academy above ;)
• from the classic white/red clowns relationships to other elaborated dynamics.
• exploring how the clown play can be enriched by those relationships (so well known in daily life).    

An Artistic Toolbox for Building Clown Play

A series of practical play and devising elements forge and enhance the clown play

Having practiced the art of comedy and clown both on stage and in hospital performing, I've been examining the common and different between these two areas, and all that can be brought from the stage into an optimal play in hospital (=maximum of stage play while considering the conditions and constraints of each venue in the healthcare environment).

On this  journey, I have been implementing tools I brought from theatre clowning, as well as others I created and developed - especially adapted for the Healthcare Clown Performer. 

The tools chosen for this workshop are practical and useful yet simple to learn and to apply. During the workshop we will practice those tools individually, in couples or in small groups.

This work offers to the performers and their partners a vocabulary that shifts the work into a creative construction site of clown play, while improvising. It also allows them to discuss about their work before, in-between and after performances in order to set common objectives, themes, as well as debrief and adjust their play together.

The Artistic Skill,
​the Act and the Duo

Performing a skill (music, song, juggling, magic, dance, puppets etc.) is one thing.
How does the clown perform the skill?

• ​when does the clown(s) do it well - the beauty of the offered skill
• when does the clown do it wrong (and what is the art of doing wrong), what else could go wrong
• exploring the ways of integrating the skill within the duo, when either one clown or both participate in it.
• what is the part of the partner, from simply observing to fully participating
• what is each of the clowns' contribution – in complicity or conflict, and how can it enrich the play
• when do obstacles appear and which are the most beneficial for clown play
• what techniques can be applied to enhance this situation and conflict

Through the workshop's journey we are going to explore those questions and discover the possibilities they offer.

Physical Comedy
​for Clowns

The play of Physical Comedy calls upon the body, the rhythm and the gesture as well as an internal intensity and presence.
The "technician" within has to be present at least as much as the interpreted character.
In this extrapolated style of play, we will explore:

• the character construction
• the structure of comic situations
• a set of tools and elements of physical and visual comedy
• a "technical" comedy exploration with the body, space, timing, partners, objects, routines

This colorful form of theatre offers any performer the ability to increase liberty, amplification, generosity, physical imagination and comedy writing, while maintaining a sincerity of emotions and depicting humanity.

Physical Storytelling & Cartoon Theatre

"Storymoving" for Clowns

A workshop about storytelling - but where words are not the first means of expression.
Storymoving : the use of the body, and the voice. Borrowing fundamental elements from cartoons and comic books, from music and cinema.

We will visit:

• techniques in mime, gesture theatre, body and movement
• an approach to musicality and rhythm
• the use of voice, vocal and body sound-effects, ambiance and scenography voice painting
• "graphic"physical tools from cartoons, comics, cinema and music.
• Storymoving ensemble work : the chorus, and individual roles (narrator, mimers, characters, sound man, musicians).

I'm a White Clown of All Colors

The white clown, the "number 1" could be so often mistaken for the "ultimate, authority director" who is less funny and solely in the service of the red august antics. 
This module explores:

• the ridiculous, idiotic and funny potential in the white clowns 'hemisphere'
• the rich emotional and poetic capacities hidden in the white clown
• the trickster, manipulator, and other archetypes offering freedom of play
• his relation with the red august and with the audience.

Thus, gaining twice play, energy and comedy in the duo.

The Support of Mask-work for the Clown

As J. Lecoq mentioned, the red nose is the smallest mask. And indeed the fundamental rules of mask-work can contribute to enriching the clown play:

• ​mobilizing the body in the right physical and emotional levels of play.
• ​making clear choices in play: rhythm, energy and space.
• using the mask technique: articulation, focus, action-reaction
• applying the tools in various nuances in the clown play 

The Body of Words

In a world of play where the body and the emotion are so present, words, misused could dilute and even drown the play.
Words, text, things to be said and heard have a body. We will explore:

• the consistency, dynamics, rhythm, color, pace, and many other aspects of speech
• speech : inflections, intonations, accents, defects, personalized forms
• invented vocabulary, gibberish. 
• use of voice, sounds, noises
• relation between the speech and the body

This work will elevate the performer's vocal and verbal expression to the heightened level of the physical play.

More workshops are available on:

For further information, contact me:

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• The Play of the Silence.
• The Clown and Singing.
• The Whole World in a Tiny Room - The Clown's play in Small Spaces.
• Constructing a Clown Number.
• Devising Creative in Parades and Walkabouts.
• From Drama to Clown.
• The Art of Fool.