I Thought My Performing Was Done, But it’s Not
Some of us clowns just keep going and the going is good.
Going through all these old archives and publishing them brings all kinds of memories back to me. The shows change and grow as I recycle them. Moving on, my clowns keep doing the same things, but in different ways.
A Jump in Time
I’m trying to follow a chronological time in my writing but I don’t think that time is particularly linear. It seems more circular – like a spiral maze but every once in a while, there’s a gap in the hedge and you can walk right through. As I get older, thoughts fly in and out of my mind like birds. Last year, I brought back my show Cradle as a 10 minute puppet show rather than a 40 minute mime piece. And here is Mellissa Holland in Dr. Clown ten years later.
Cradle Revisited
I like to create shows, silly or not. I dream of shows. There’s always a show around the corner. As I grew older, I largely gave up performing as a white-faced mime clown. Instead, I developed Agnes, an old lady clown who could talk and tell stories. The make-up was less, just a red nose and glasses, performing was physically less energetic and I found I enjoyed animating objects and making simple puppets to animate stories. I had an opportunity to perform at a cabaret and decided to revive Cradle as a clown/puppet piece.
I made the puppets at an Art Hive where I work as a facilitator. As part of this role, I need to model art-making while participants are free to gather and work on their own pieces. The Art Hives are a concept developed by Jani Timm-Botos from the Creative Arts Therapies department at Concordia University. I was thinking about how to perform Cradle with puppets, so I thought I’d try to make the puppets while I facilitated the art hive. The kids were interested in the process but busy with their own artwork. Occasionally they’d give me suggestions and I’d incorporate them into my creatures. I made the Mother and the Devil out of papers towel rolls and the child out of a toilet paper roll. The kids didn’t like the child. They said she was creepy. It reminded them of a horror clown doll come to life like Chucky. So, I set the puppets in round wine gift tube and left them there.
I thought that instead of badly made puppets, I would simply animate objects. I had two wooden salad forks that were like big hands. I thought one could be the Devil (with red ribbons) and one could be the Water Spirit (a blue scarf); the Mother and Daughter could be a tall egg beater and a small egg beater. I brought some red, blue, green and brown scarves at the second-hand store to become the set or environment for the story. I tried to play out the story that I could visualize in my mind. I couldn’t possibly manipulate all of these objects and none of them had moving parts. I felt like a pathetic failure. I thought, “Why is it that things look so great in my mind but when I try to play the story, it’s just a bunch of junk?” Then I thought, maybe that’s what I can play as a clown – that gap between the masterpiece in my mind and what actually happens.
When I went back to the art hive, I re-examined my puppets. The Mother was okay. The Devil was okay but the kids were right, the Child looked creepy. So, I made another child puppet with occasional input from other adults and kids. Eventually, she was done to my liking and I got approval from the kids. I realized the two parts of the wine tube could hold the puppets upright when I wasn’t handling them. I put them all in a bag and took them home.
When I was creating the show again, I realized that I had forgotten about the water spirit. I needed something round and blue. The candle holder with a blue scarf tied around it could pass for a sea monster or water spirit. When it came time for the performance, Agnes took over. She narrated the story partly in broken French and English while claiming to be bilingual. The Devil and Agnes became tangled in the chair, the Water Spirit broke loose during the battle with the Devil and the Mother transformed into a tree when Agnes pulled a brown scarf over the wine tube and wound a green scarf around the top. I felt successful. The clown was able to tell a difficult, thought-provoking story with silly puppets that the audience enjoyed.
Clowning for Connection
Melissa Holland (Dr Fifi Se Pense Bien) (cont’d)
Co-creating the Dr Clown Foundation/ Fondation Dr Clown is one of my proudest accomplishments. Our mission of bringing joy, laughter, humour and connection to people in difficult moments of vulnerability and illness resonates with so many. Our therapeutic clowns have touched and continue to touch lives on a daily basis. After 20+ years, 56 clowns, hundreds of thousands of beautiful moments, its unfathomable, but it just comes down to the simplest of stories.
Last week, I ran into a mother who knew me as Dr. Fifi. She could not contain her joy at seeing me and showing me her daughter whom I'd known as a little kid, a patient with cancer, who is now a beautiful, healthy teen. She told this story of being at the end of her rope one day at the hospital. She was a recent immigrant, didn't have any family or network of support, a single mom. Her daughter was losing weight and so they had to put in an NG tube through her nose to her stomach to be able to feed her. The little one, in a fit of anger and discomfort ripped out her own NG tube, and the staff was saying that they were going to have to put it back in, which is not a fun process. The mother couldn't take it and went to wait in the hall, crying, alone. We, Dr. Pedalo and Dr. Fifi happened by at that moment. We hugged her and listened to her and then went into the procedure room and stayed for the half-hour process. The mom came in after and saw us there with the staff and her kid, calm, playing with us, with the NG tube back in place. She said she'll always remember that moment: "You made it easier for her, they didn't have to do it by force, I was so happy. I had no family, you were my family."
She gave me permission to retell this story and to post her photo: "choose the one where I am the tallest and sexiest !". Fatemeh you are an amazing example of strength and resilience. Thank you!
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/