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Be a Clown

Clown:

When the body experience turns into Art.

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I chose to be a clown and an Art therapist in a fairly mature age, after 17 years in the Police. Becoming a Clown was one of the most beautiful choices of my life. 

 

Above all, being a Clown means being able to laugh at oneself. Learning to laugh at myself  was necessary to revisit my past and identify those defences built around my wounds, that did not allow me to fully enjoy life. This process of personal growth has turned my scars into tickling butterflies.

 

To make others laugh, we must be willing to get involved without masks; this may seem like a paradox since the Clown wears a mask! Through the mask, we can overturn our conditioning and put ourselves at the service of the game with humility, sincerity, empathy and innocence. The mask "contains" our emotions and allows us to develop the clown game by embodying the opposites.

 

By nature, the Clown is a child who has not yet acquired the rules of adults and, for this reason - without even being aware of their existence - he breaks them.

 

The state of innocence allows the Clown to become a mirror, a mediator through which the viewer experiences emotions and situations that often cannot afford to live in ordinary life.

 

Through him, we can experience and cross all aspects of life, taking distance from and laughing at it. Laughing becomes, therefore, a therapeutic act that de-dramatizes and lightens life.

 

Every time I go on stage, I "breath" the audience as if it was part of me. I feel everything that happens inside me and I play with it.

Playing with one's emotions implies a profound knowledge of oneself and the acceptance of what we feel without prejudice. For this reason, to be a Clown, it is essential to be aware of your emotions, to accept them and to know how to express them uncensored as children do.

Emotions represent the game material of the Clown. The Clown is an empathetic being; in the circus, he is the one who "does acrobatics with emotions", as the clown Virginia Imaz says.

Jango Edwards, father and founder of the Nouveau Clown movement, states, "The art of the Clown-actor is not just a profession but a lifestyle that requires an understanding of emotions, sensitivity, pathos and heart".

 

When a Clown shares his emotions, getting a laugh from the audience, he shows that his emotional universe is a precious treasure because it provokes good humour and a strong sense of unity among people. Every human being has this treasure. Laughing ourselves and making others laugh is a miracle that reminds us of all the beauty and value of Life.

 

During my workshops, I use various meditation techniques, experiential exercises and Art therapy procedures, as a key to access to the knowledge of the Clown. The use of Art therapy procedures make the creative process more fluid and funnier, and help to achieve greater awareness of ourselves and our resources.

 

No technical nor artistic preparation is required in Art therapy. The plastic materials, the creative process and the image produced act as a vehicle and as a container for experiences and affections, thus allowing a greater sense of emotional control.

 

Through the creative act, it is possible to come into contact with one's own internal reality in order to know, accept  and transform it. The creation of a relational, intimate, warm and shared relational space, will allow participants to feel comfortable in expressing emerging emotions, feelings and thoughts. The use of the clown mask will help us to share our experiences with irony and innocence and to transform them into a concrete material of games to be proposed in clown improvisations.

 

My workshops (Clown Chi, The Garden of Smiles and Clown Rise) are transformed into a journey where the body dimension is the main means of expression to learn how to navigate one's emotions, to sharpen vulnerability, sensitivity and to increase the ability to listen to the others empathically.

 

The world is experienced through the body. To the Clown, this experience is Art.

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