Humanitarian Clowning has a Place
I am always amazed at the stories clowns tell from clowning around the world.
In one story David was clowning with Clowns Without Borders in Africa. The families were crowding the Doctor so he had no space to work. David went behind the crowd and started performing. Gradually everyone turned around and watched. Even the Doctor was watching. David told him to keep working. And so, the Doctor had enough space to work, while the crowd watched the clown.
I met David Fiset at a clowning workshop with Bataclown in Montreal. Bataclown works with clowning as a social intervention and even in corporate groups
https://www.bataclown.com/
They call themselves “clownanalysts” and have grown into a large organization with many publications. My understanding of what they did as clowns was to attend a day-long corporate meeting in the morning as regular people and then in the afternoon they attended as clowns. Through the use of humour and laughter, they bring the group to a better understanding of the cause of their misfunction and better ways to go forward.
David started to tell me his stories of performing as a clown around the world. I was amazed and asked to interview him about his experiences in humanitarian clowning. He is still working in Canada and internationally as a performing clown.
Clowning for Connection
From personal interview with David Fiset, November 2010.
“Ever since I was a small child, I would like to watch the street performers. I would absorb every detail, and then, when it was over, I would be sad. I was sad because it wasn’t me up there performing.
When I was nineteen, I’d had enough of school and knew I had to do something, but I was too shy to perform. I would go to the street to get set up, but then I would pack up and go home without performing. Finally, I just had to do something, so I told some people that it was my first show and could they please watch me. It was just a few people, but they watched me for ten minutes and each gave me a dollar, and they encouraged me. At first it was just a few people, then it was thirty people, then it was a big crowd around me, and then, in the humanitarian work, it was thousands.
I met Jacko, the founder of Clowns without Borders, and then I went to Haiti with the organization. It was amazing to perform for huge crowds. The people would start to storm us and we couldn’t perform the show. So, before we started, we would build a big barricade of whatever we could and perform behind the barricade. By the end of the performance the people would be climbing the barricade and it would be over.
Then I worked on many professional projects as a self-producer like Les Aviateurs with Yan Imbealt, and the Duo Hoops with Becky Priebe. Now I also work for a theatre as a circus actor. I traveled a lot for show business; I went to Taiwan, New Zealand, Australia, Paris, Mexico, Cambodia, China, Ethiopia twice with humanitarian work, as well as performing in other countries with professional work. Then I did more humanitarian work like the big project with Execo in collaboration with Clowns Without Borders in 2006. We were working with a medical team that was helping children with cleft palates. There was a huge crowd of parents and children. The doctors were being swamped by people. The crowd was a mess, and the doctors couldn’t do anything. I thought, “Now is the time.” I went behind the crowd with my suitcase and I started performing. Gradually people started turning around and grew quiet as they watched. Even the doctors grew quiet and watched, until they realized that it was their chance to work with the patients. After that, we had a routine. I performed and they treated patients. The documentary title about my experience is The Memory Box.
When I came back to Canada, I went up Labrador to teach circus skills. That was really hard. The kids didn’t care, and they didn’t like me. They would act bored and disinterested and stop each other from having fun.
When I was in Ethiopia the second time in 2007, I was performing for a Black high school of a thousand kids. I knew that the kids could get out of control from my experiences in Haiti, so I suggested to the director that we create a barricade between the show and the students. He said no, not to worry, to just go ahead and start the show. I started the show, and the students started to get excited and come towards the stage. The director went to the side and picked up a bunch of sticks. He handed them out to the teachers, and they started to beat the kids back with the sticks.
I just stood there. I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t know what to do—how could I continue the show? So I asked the director to be a volunteer. Things quieted down. I asked him to do different things as a volunteer. Everyone was watching. I asked him to touch his toes, but he couldn’t touch his toes. I tried different things to help him touch his toes, but he couldn’t do it. I said, “I don’t know what I’m going to do,” and I picked up a stick.
All thousand students were completely laughing as I have never experienced before. The director was still bending over as I held the stick. He looked at me and laughed. He knew what was coming. I said, “Maybe this will help you learn,” and I gave him a couple whacks with the stick. The crowd cheered.
I said, “No, that’s no way to teach.” I helped him up and gave him a hug.
Everyone kept cheering. I presented him like a hero: “Here is your Director!!!!” It was a powerful experience! This is one of so many extraordinary unbelievable stories that I experienced in my life.”
Making the Most of Difference
Not only was David Fiset in a liminal position by being a clown, he was from a different culture. This made him appear different to the people for whom he was performing, which gave him a certain status. His perceptions of the culture were different from those of the people who lived within it, so he perceived problems and challenges from another angle, which was valuable in achieving resolution. In the case of the school and its director, the clown could shift perspectives by inverting the status of the director and celebrating the outcome with laughter, which brought awareness to the injustice of the situation. This, in turn, transformed the present experience and might contribute to a more permanent transformation and possible social change.
References:
Proctor, Sue. The Archetypal Role of the Clown as a Catalyst for Individual and Societal Transformation. https://spectrum.library.concordia.ca/id/eprint/977096/