A few days ago, someone told me about a study from an English university showing that laughter is good for your health. Some people hunt for scientific proof of what laughter can do—proof that matters, certainly—while others are so convinced they've made it their life's purpose: to bring smiles to others.
We've been hearing about clown therapy for years now. Ever since an American doctor, Patch Adams, understood that a less formal approach—one less rigid and stifled—could restore smiles in places where suffering usually rules. Young people and older ones have chosen this path of service, taking courses to discover their own clown within.
Giulia is one of them. Very special indeed.
Giulia is twenty-four, lives in Naples with her parents, studies Political Science in a program designed for her, and she has Down syndrome.
She and her parents tell me about her unusual journey. When high school ended, even though she wanted to keep studying, she lost something crucial: the everyday moments of connection, conversation, clash, and growth that a classroom offers. The kind of moments that touch a young person's whole self—not just her mind, already well-stimulated, but her heart and her feelings. Around that time she became an aunt. She discovered she loved children, and suddenly their presence moved her from the youngest in the family to something new. With them she found joy and new goals to reach, new abilities to develop. With her sister's help, she discovered clown therapy and a group in Naples that trains aspiring clowns. After passing the initial audition and completing the training, Giulia chose her alter ego: Clown Cicciola. Armed with a coat full of surprises, a crooked hat on a colorful wig, and most of all her big red nose, she began performing: in hospital wards alongside two older colleagues, at public celebrations with the whole group.
There are also organizing meetings and ongoing training sessions. Discovering your clown isn't something you finish once and for all, or something you can just improvise. There are gags to prepare—like the one with four magical chairs that Giulia describes to me. Each chair has a special power: one tickles, one itches, one makes you faint. The unsuspecting clown sits on each one and reacts, sending the audience into laughter.
Anyone who chooses this kind of volunteer work—and it's hard, often—must prepare to face suffering, limits, weakness, and contradictions. First in themselves, then in the people they meet. As I read in the training materials, the course to discover your own clown emphasizes these sides of yourself, values them, exaggerates them, transforms them into "comic gifts." We usually take our weaknesses so seriously we try to hide or ignore them. The clown unmasks himself. He doesn't want people laughing at him. And that's exactly when he succeeds.
It's a deep journey, not always easy—especially for Giulia. One of her hardest moments came when her group went to perform at a facility for people with severe disabilities. Giulia felt awkward for a while. But once she adjusted her red nose, Clown Cicciola finally threw herself into it, overcoming her hesitation.
Her group—the people she trained with—matters enormously. She truly feels like one of them, treated as an equal, in a place where her talents and her struggles are welcomed and turned into gifts, as they are for everyone there.
Other activities Giulia experiences, like the ones organized by AIPD for leisure time, feel different and separate. There too she's included, engaged, stimulated among peers. But as a clown, Giulia does something else: she flips the script. She challenges the role people expect of someone with Down syndrome—the assumption that she can only receive help and has little to give.
Giulia and her fellow clowns carry an important purpose, even if they don't always feel its full weight or think about it consciously: to keep seeking and finding the joy inside themselves and to give it as a gift to everyone they meet.
Cristina Tersigni, 2009
"Scopriamoci clown"
A volunteer association working in Naples since 2004, mainly in the pediatric ward of A. Cardarelli Hospital but also in rehabilitation centers, senior communities, group homes, and in communities on the margins of society. The organization practices clown therapy, a method pioneered with great success by physician-clown Patch Adams.