Sunday, September 13, 2015

Learning From The Best!




Medical clowning work is not an easy job. 

You have to be creative, you have to be good at listening especially to your clown partners and you have to be sharp and precise so that your spontaneous performance will be understood by your audience, in this case, children. 

You just can't rely on making balloons most of the time. It will freeze your creativity during your interaction with sick kids. As a clown you need to take risks to do the unthinkable, to throw in wild ideas during your clowning work in the hospitals.

That is why I am working to get her to come to Kuala Lumpur and teach us this December. 

This is Caroline Simonds, a 6-feet tall, 64-year old lady from Washington who run off with a circus and eventually started the clown doctors program in France in 1991. Now she leads Le Rire Medecin, a non-profit that sends 100 trained medical clowns to cheer up sick kids in 15 hospitals across France, every week.

They are going to celebrate their 25th anniversary next year and she told me that it is going to be a year long celebration.

Her book, The Clown Doctor Chronicles, is still my favourite book to read on hospital clowning work. 

She is the best! She will come to observe, to train and to coach Red Bubbles clown doctors for 5 days. This is once in a lifetime opportunity to learn from one of the world's top trainer in medical clowning work!

Of course, there are costs to it. Currently I am working to raise funds around RM20,000 to pay for her trip to Kuala Lumpur. It will cover her teaching fee, lodgings and meals while she is here. We have booked her flights (with extra legroom of course!) with the initial funding of RM5000 we've got. It is another RM15,000 to go. 

I am confident we can get it by the end of November and really looking forward to learn as much as possible from her.



1 comment:

the legend said...

Is,

Tahniah.