【Let Love Stream 2】Let’s Be Clowns Together (Tsai Pei-Kuei)

Imagine a kind of public art that, in form, assembles saturated and abundant colors—bright, mischievous, trembling, and leaping; that repeats and repeats its failures simply to complete a small trick, taking pleasure in it; that is a process of rehearsal, with the creator continually drawing new contours on their own face and searching for a new face; that responds face-to-face to its audience in specific places; that enjoys conversing with children, cherishes every one of their reactions, and seeks to win their hearts; that possesses the most resilient emotional strength, aspiring to accompany people through difficult moments with art amid the smells of medical disinfectant.

It is the “Medical Clown,” also known as the “Dr. Red Nose.” This article is written from several experiences of coming into close contact with Medical Clown. What can we see when we view Medical Clown’ performances through the lens of “public art”? Public art now takes many forms; this short essay focuses on the “artistic quality” that Dr. Red Nose possess because they are “public.”

When my daughter was in the junior class at kindergarten, she was hospitalized for five days. She was very young at the time, and the nurse caring for her said that I could sleep beside her in the bed. Those days—when I was not ill yet slept in a hospital bed for several consecutive nights, shuttling between the school and the hospital room—were both tense and surreal: rushing to the classroom after waking up, hurrying back to the hospital room after class, eating here, preparing lessons here, and playing with my daughter here, as though this had become our ordinary home. My daughter’s treatment involved receiving antibiotics through an IV for several consecutive days. First, an indwelling needle had to be inserted into the back of her hand. For me, although the procedure was not long, it was the most agonizing time: the nurse asked me to bring my daughter to the treatment room and then asked me to wait outside. Through the closed door, I heard two nurses soothing and encouraging her, while my daughter screamed continuously, hoarse and desperate. I could do nothing but weep uncontrollably.

More than a year ago, while observing and researching the “Dr. Red Nose,” I had the opportunity to accompany two clowns, A-Di-T仔 and Polo, during their hospital rounds. I happened to witness a mother and her hospitalized little boy going through the ordeal I had faced years earlier. This time, the mother was not asked to leave and could stay beside her child. To help insert an indwelling needle into the little boy, two nurses repeatedly rubbed his small, tender arm with a heat pack, trying hard to find the traces of a vein, while his mother quietly held him. I did not dare approach this high-tension scene, or even go near the doorway—partly out of consideration for the mother and child’s feelings, and partly because I was deeply distressed and anxious. Just then, the sound of a ukulele, accompanied by the two clowns’ light humming, entered the treatment room. A-Di-T仔 approached the little boy and asked him, “My big boss wants a drink. Can he drink water from the water dispenser? Or can he drink water from the faucet here?” A-Di-T仔 pointed toward the tap and continued asking the little boy, “Can he drink Coke? Will Coke come out if we open this?” I heard the little boy’s childish voice as he seriously answered these two amusing fellows who seemed to “know absolutely nothing.” The little boy genuinely wanted to help them. I breathed a huge sigh of relief. Although the boy still cried loudly and kicked hard when the needle was inserted, A-Di-T仔 and Polo continued playing and singing, accompanying him through this heart-stopping, difficult moment. “We” were all less afraid. At the various points along the two clowns’ little journey through the hospital, I saw different forms of “we”—this time, the mother and little boy, the nursing staff, and me, who had once experienced a similar situation (comparatively minor, yet still leaving behind a traumatic feeling)—forming a temporary community and assembling the public nature of Dr. Red Nose.

This kind of communal companionship, by creating the “distraction” described above, allows us to deviate from the reality that has seized us, producing a wonderfully soothing effect. I think “the beauty of distraction” must be the aesthetic of Medical Clown. Near the end of that day of accompanying them, an elderly grandmother passed by me. Perhaps she sensed that I had been shaken by something beyond words, my thoughts confused (probably showing as being speechless and wide-eyed?), and, speaking kindly in Taiwanese, she offered to solve the mystery for me: “They’re ‘playing’ with the children to make them laugh!” It hit the nail on the head. I remembered my grandmother once saying, “A child’s smile is like a flower blooming,” and during my time accompanying the clowns, I truly witnessed several miraculous blossoms of smiles: on hospital beds, beside hospital beds, and in the corridor where we were standing… The grandmother, too, was smiling as she spoke. Miraculously, every smile that bloomed like a flower made the person smiling seem like a child. The clowns’ way of “playing” with children is to draw attention away from the difficult present and create “distraction,” allowing the beauty of distraction to flow among “us.” What is moving is that sick children often still generously and willingly give their “attention” to the clowns, then instinctively play along as children, while “laughter” is the natural harvest produced in the process.

Is this kind of “playing” a performance? Yes. Tseng Ching-Wen, a clown with the southern branch of Dr. Red Nose Caring Clown Association, once wrote, “Behind the red nose mask is an ‘actor.’” Then what does the clown actor’s “acting” mean? When clowns set out from the lounge, they have already roughly planned the short scene they will present that day. For example, the scene in the performance I observed was A-Di-T仔 accompanying Polo to search for the person Polo had secretly loved since the third grade of elementary school. Along the way, the two clowns interacted with the children they visited, “sincerely” responding in real time to all the children’s reactions and eliciting a shared “game.” As Tseng Ching-Wen describes it, “Dr. Red Nose always actively capture patients’ attention and interest in various ways, gaining a certain degree of communication and cooperation in order to develop games that can be played.”

Even while wearing the smallest mask—the red nose—and exaggerated makeup, the clowns’ performance is “sincere.” This may seem contradictory at first glance, but as Tseng Ching-Wen writes in the same article, “Because clown art places particular emphasis on the clown character’s innate innocence, clowns express their emotions throughout the various processes of improvised play, sincerely presenting their own vulnerability and allowing the voice of genuine humanity to flow through the cold hospital wards.” Clown performance expert Christopher Bayes also tells us that the “clown” is who you would be if no one ever told you “no”; to understand the clown, one must discover the “unsocialized self” and rediscover one’s ability to create wonder and enjoy pleasure (Bayes, 2019). Bringing the two together, we can infer that the clown’s “acting” is not acting in the narrow sense—such as the colloquial meaning of “pretending” in “Stop acting!” or the way one studies, simulates, and reproduces the appearance a scripted character ought to have when “playing a role.” The clown’s “acting” is “rehearsal,” as in an “exercise,” where we practice our responses within a situation. The “clown” discovers and then rediscovers their original self, especially the curious, playful self, while the “Medical Clown” uses this self to face patients and their families, leading them to rehearse distraction and departure from reality together, becoming “clowns” together.

I also observed that before opening the lounge door, the two actors put on their red noses, as if switching modes and flipping a switch. Through interaction, they entered a “clown state,” acting as each other’s engine and giving each other momentum. As an observer, I witnessed this cooperative process of entering a trance: they tossed dialogue and movements back and forth, responding to one another through an entire sequence before setting out. I could not help thinking, “The door isn’t even open yet. A little warm-up should be enough; surely they could save this energy?” But then another thought occurred to me: “Even when no one sees this scene, they probably still spend—or waste—time warming each other up, allowing each other to enter the state completely!” I suddenly realized that my tendencies toward “restraint” and “economy” were precisely what the clown seeks to transcend and overcome through its “abundance,” “generosity,” and “excess” in appearance and bearing, as well as its “profligacy,” “leeway,” and “fearlessness” in the use of time and energy—using great amounts of time to rehearse and to fail.

Much of the shock I experienced from observing the performances also came from this: while I awkwardly projected myself into, became stuck in, and felt powerless amid the difficult life experiences unfolding in different wards and at different beds, the two clowns on duty moved in and out with a smooth rhythm, caring for each person they interacted with. The mental resilience required in this cycle of moving toward, responding to, and gathering things up is the “professional” quality I admire most in clown performance. I think that, in addition to the extensive accumulation of clown “rehearsal” and life experience needed to temper this professionalism, the full interface formed by the “mask,” “makeup,” and “costume” suited to each individual clown—provisionally called the “clown face”—also enhances, protects, and cushions, embodying a kind of power that comes from artistic form. Like a custom-fitted magnetic shield, the “clown face” directs attention toward that interface. Through the clown’s attunement, integration, and trust with the “clown face,” the clown can calmly focus on the present, receive every subtle facial expression and physical signal from the other person, and deftly transform them into sincere self-rehearsal, thereby issuing a call to the children: Let’s be clowns together!

References:

Bayes, C. (2019). Discovering the clown, or The funny book of good acting. Theatre Communications Group.

Tseng, Ching-Wen (n.d.). Dr. Red Nose and drama therapy? Dr. Red Nose.https://drn.org.tw/dramatherapy/

Associate Professor and Director, Graduate Institute of Interdisciplinary Arts, National Kaohsiung Normal University. She has long explored the social efficacy of art through curatorial practice, writing, and education, and has used interdisciplinary methods to build connections between art and life, as well as ecology.