A group of WCA officers and respected WCA clowns have crafted this informative response for you to use when discussing the value that laughter and clowning may bring to others.

Over the years, many cultures have had clown characters serve in the role of comic relief; bringing laughter after a serious problem in the family or community; or bringing back a sense of hope and joy after a natural disaster such as a tornado, hurricane or tsunami.  The concept is ancient and is even found in the Bible.  Proverbs 17:22 says  “A cheerful heart is a good medicine, but a downcast spirit dries up the bones.”  The Bible has surprisingly little to say about laughter but what it does say is important.  This ancient wisdom is getting confirmed by modern science, with some studies suggesting that laughing may actually boost the immune system and thereby help us to fight disease.  In recent years, researchers have continued to explore the connection between laughing and physical health, and while the conclusions are still tentative, there is little doubt that laughing has an anesthetic effect, relieving us of pain via a surge of endorphins, and it also decreases the levels of the stress hormone cortisol.   Humor can divert the mind from pain, even it if is only for a few minutes, and that few minutes could be the difference that can bring change or help with a medical procedure.  There is a contagious factor to clowning that, even in a hospital situation, seems to reach out to the doctors, nurses, and family of the patient, so that people in any situation of need are helped after a time of laughter and a short time to just forget the difficult situation they are in.  The first laughter in a community living in a tent city after a devastating tsunami in Japan or a hurricane in New Orleans can bring hope and start the process of returning lives to some sort of normalcy.

In the late 1800’s, William James suggested a novel idea about emotions; that the mental state follows the physical body.  As he put it, “We don’t sing because we are happy, we are happy because we sing.”  According to James, if we aren’t feeling particularly happy the thing to do is to make the body do something that looks like happiness, such as laugh or sing.  Even fake laughing will sometimes seem funny enough to get us really laughing.

In the 1970’s Norman Cousins popularized the idea that laughing could actually be curative, after he treated his ankylosing spondylitis (a form of arthritis) with repeated doses of vitamin C and Marx brothers’ films.

In 1979, members of the World Clown Association were part of an international clown conference called the International Clown Summit, held in Dalkeith, Scotland.  Professional clowns from many nationalities came together to look at the art of clowning and focus on the direction clowning seemed to be going.  We studied four general types of clowns:  circus clowns, corporate clowns, community clowns, and caring clowns.  There was quite a crossover of types: a circus clown might visit a hospital in an advance city as a caring clown, or a birthday party community clown might also do corporate events and occasional circus performances.  Each type of clown had some sort of makeup and wardrobe to define the clown persona.  There were varieties in skills, such as magic, juggling, ballooning, or physical comedy.  But finally, after a week of study, the differences in the four types of clown came down to only two things:  the audience and the attitude of the clown.  Rodeo clowns offer safety, protection and distraction; circus clowns perform in much larger “big stage” situations; whereas caring clowns perform much more gently in a hospital room – usually in a one-to-one situation.  All clowns were there to bring humor, comic relief, laughter, joy, hope, and a sense of timeless cheerfulness to their audiences.

The World Clown Association has members around the world who serve in hospitals, nursing homes, mental facilities and other institutions to bring hope and joy into difficult situations.  We have a Director of Caring Clowning and a Caring Clown Committee that works to educate and train those members interested in this type of clowning.  For hospital clowning, one has to learn the strict essential rules for each hospital, and clowns serving in disaster areas are trained to know the right time and interactions to bring hope to the affected.

WCA strives to be the leader in resourcing caring clowns. Besides articles in every Clowning Around magazine we also offer online input and guidance. Our WCA website is privileged to offer the book by Anita Thies called The Joy of Hospital Clowning online. This is a free of charge perk for caring clowns.

WCA Past President Richard Snowberg, has a wonderful book called The Caring Clown that covers the how, why, and where of clowning for those who want to learn more and serve in this caring clown way.

Practically every clown who entertains for those in need in a caring clown situation has encountered a “breakthrough” where a child speaks after several months of no communication, or an older person smiles even while in a coma, or the baby that hasn’t walked takes its first steps to reach out to the clown.  WCA Past president, Deanna Hartmier, from Winnipeg, Canada, shares a story from the hospital where she was asked to visit a young girl who had been non-responsive for over 2 months from a brain tumor and was being tube fed.  She had simply shut down.  Deanna shares “I was fortunate enough to have the ultimate experience.  Just by having compassion and being there for this young girl we managed to get her eyes moving, we got a smile and when I was leaving, she waved.  Two days later her parents brought her to see our show.  She walked on stage for pictures and I got a hug, through many tears of joy.”

Our WCA Past President Arthur Pedlar, from Southport, England, shares an occasion where he was the speaker at a Presidential Dinner, a “black-tie affair,” and after the meal he put his make-up on in front of the audience and did his act with unicycles and instruments.  He states:

At one round table was a young man who NEVER looked at me for the whole meal, he kept his head down and was unresponsive to the performance.  The President later said he was her son who had given up a promising acting career to be a “family man” but his marriage had failed and he had returned home without a wife or his two children.  He had only come to the gala event to support his mother as ‘the last thing he wanted was a loud mouthed red-nosed big booted clown trying to make him laugh!

Later when Arthur was changing and removing his makeup in a screened off area of the lovely old barn, the young man came to him beaming saying, “There’s need for me to tell you what a success the evening’s been”.  What he saw was a slow and silent old character clown who’s every effort to do something went wrong before it eventually came right; he could identify with that and it gave him hope for his future.

It’s been said that the clown is the eternal survivor.  It does not matter how many times he gets tripped up by others or falls over his own feet – he gets up, dusts himself off, and gets on with life.  That attitude, combined with the heart of a caring clown, can change hopeless situations with the healing power of the clown.  We should all laugh!  It’s probably good for us, and it certainly can’t hurt!