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Hospital Clown Trainers Come (and Go)
from Near and Far
This fall, world-class hospital clowns will visit Hearts & Noses to provide specialized training to help our clowns better serve the children at our partner hospitals.
The first workshop will be taught by David Barashi who is a member of Dream Doctors Project. David holds a degree in Nursing and Theater Arts from Haifa University in Israel and clowns at Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem. He has been a medical clown for 7 years and a street clown for 15 years. He has a special interest in visiting children who have survived disasters and has clowned in Haiti, among other places. Hearts & Noses clowns traveled to Israel in 2011 to attend the International Symposium on Medicine and Medical Clowning and were fortunate enough to be able to see David and his colleagues in action. Dream Doctors was founded in 2001 and operates in 18 medical centers throughout Israel.
The second workshop will be facilitated by the faculty of the New York Goofs Clown School. This will be a two-day workshop, one of three this year. The Goofs are both clown trainers and hospital clowns at Children's Medical Center in Dallas, Texas. Their goal is to help their clowning students create and further develop their clowning through character, working from the inside out. They use tools such as improvisation, movement, and eccentric dance. Students often say that Goof School is as much a journey of self-discovery as of clowning.
"We are very excited to have trainers of this caliber joining us this year," said Cheryl Lekousi, Hearts & Noses Executive Director. "High-quality, on-going clown training is part of our commitment to the professionalism of the Troupe and our service to the children we exist to serve. We hope to learn many new techniques that we can bring to the pediatric floors to make our visits even more fun and exciting."
In February, two of our own Hearts & Noses clown trainers, will be presenting a workshop at St. Ambrose University in Iowa. Members of the Psychology Department there are interested in studying the effects of hospital clowning on children and eventually hope to develop a research program. Cheryl Lekousi, aka Tic Toc and Hearts & Noses Executive Director, and Joyce Friedman, aka Frizzle and Clown Trainer, will be presenting the workshop on behalf of Hearts & Noses.
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