Excerpts from The Art & Joy of Hospital Clowning
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Part A: Developing clown voices using your props
· Find three props in the room.
· Find someone with whom you have not worked before and sit on the floor opposite each other.
· Each of your props will have a different voice. You and your partner will take a few minutes and work with your props and voices. You are just trying different voices. Go very high in pitch and go very low. Go nasal, but don’t tighten your glottis. You can stay with one voice or change voices during your play.
Use accents if you’d like, or use gibberish.
· Now talk to each other’s props. Do a little 20-second play introducing your props to each other.
· What did it feel like? You can use this in a skit with the children in the hospital. One prop may talk to another prop. The objective is to open up the little boy and little girl in each one of you. This is Clown World because it doesn’t make any sense.

Part B: Interactions using your prop
· Pick up one prop.
· Walk around the room and have interactions with the other clowns using your prop. Use different voices, including animal voices.
· Meet everyone else’s prop.

6. Jump rope tangle
· For this trick you need: a jump rope and several clowns.
· Give one end of the jump rope to a clown. The jump rope goes around several clowns and they get wound up in rope.
· The clowns ask the child, How do we get untangled? Or the clowns can mime the question.
· The child tells the clowns how to get untangled but the clowns misunderstand him and get more tangled up.
· The child finally succeeds in getting the clowns untangled from the jump rope.
· The main thing is to keep eye contact with the child.
· At a party, children can actually touch you to get you undone. At the hospital, the child can give you directions but not touch you.
· Be careful that none of the clowns gets stuck holding a difficult position for too long.

8. Imaginary baseball game
· For this skit you need: other clowns.
· Caution: If you are using a real ball and it has touched the floor, do not let the child touch it. The hospital floor is full of germs. Better to have the child mime the ball.
· The batter sets up the three bases and home plate, all within a very small area. Some clowns use a rubber chicken as the bat, or the clown can mime a bat.
· The pitcher may be a clown or the child, depending on how interactive the child wants to be. The child might also participate as another role (umpire, outfielder).
· The child can be given an imaginary baseball, so she can be the pitcher. Kids love this!
· No matter what is pitched, the clown thinks he has smacked it out of the park, runs the bases, and makes it home safe. This can be very funny in super slow motion. He’s thrilled! Often the ball isn’t even hit. It is ridiculous fun and the clowns have a great time. Children love to see clowns being ridiculous!
· Another play is one where the batter claims the pitch was a ball, the pitcher claims it was a strike, arguing nose to nose. The possibilities are limitless!

10. Clown Symphony
· For this shtick you need: three to ten people in the room.
· The clown invites each person to make a sound.
· Invite the child to conduct them all together from the bed to make a “musical” symphony. Offer the child a washable prop to use as a baton.

14. Clown remote control
· For this shtick you will need: a remote control device. Broken ones are easy to find!
· One clown uses the remote control to control the other clown.
· Then you can give the remote control to the child. Let the child remote control the clown.
· The controlled clown needs to maintain eye contact with the child and keep in sync with what the child is doing. If you can’t see the remote in the child’s hand, another clown can watch the child’s hand movements and make a sound when the child moves the button on the remote.
· Caution: You must disinfect the remote control after the child touches it.

Exercise 6: Role Playing – Initial : See video clip, Child in Bed
· Divide into small groups. Put chairs together to simulate a bed. Determine a door and define the room.
· Chose one clown per group to role-play the child. I will come around and give directions on how the child will respond.
· The other clowns will appear at the door, make their offer to clown, come in, clown for two to three minutes, then leave.
· Then the child in the bed will give feedback about what worked, what didn’t, and how the child felt.

Processing the role-playing

What have you seen that doesn’t work?

Please note: We believe that hospital clowning for children requires professional training and supervision. These materials are intended to serve as a supplement to professional training.

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