TO RUSSIA WITH LAUGHTER
by Barbara Brewster
Published in Living Now Magazine, 1998
According to Dr Patch Adams, laughter is the best medicine. It's not unusual for this MD to consult with patients while dressed as a clown and riding a unicycle. Every year Patch takes a troupe of clowns (no experience necessary) on a "Nasal Diplomacy" tour to Russia where they spread cheer in hospitals, orphanages and old people's homes. I signed on for the '95 tour.
I've always relished experimenting with my life, a penchant which sharply accelerated when in 1984 my body crashed and I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. The recovery came, I believe, because of my willingness to explore and risk personal change. Confronting my fears and breaking through self-inflicted limitations has become the standard by which I live. For some time, I'd wanted to break the shell around my mostly-hidden silliness. Here was my chance.
Russia, too, pulled me. Thirty years before, I studied Russian intensively at the Monterey Institute of Foreign Studies in California. The language had revealed the passions, complexities, and nuances of a culture of extremes, a land of indulgence and poverty, serfs and tsars, intense music and 20 ways to say the verb "to go." Finally, that investment would bear fruit.
For one month, my life WENT WOOSHH! with preparations. Eagerly, I set about resurrecting Russian words, phrases and songs buried under years of disuse. Clowns practically fell from the sky to help me learn skills I'd never imagined being part of my repertoire--making brooms stand on end, balancing a broom on my chin, and making balls and quarters vanish. I read how there are three styles of clowns: the white face, or classic "straight" type, the Auguste, the bumbler, and the character, of which Charlie Chaplin is an example.
One clown taught me how to twist balloon animals--an art I have yet to master since I can't blow up the bloody things. He also taught me the essentials of applying grease paint and powder by making up my face in Auguste style. What an amazing transformation! I was astonished to see myself looking so ... well, like a clown. Creating a clown face, I found, can be a long and painstaking process, and I, who avoid even wearing foundation, wondered if my impatience would doom my efforts.
To discover my clown character I experimented with different movements, walking gaits, and wearing various hats. When I donned a puffy cap with a wide bill, I found myself dancing and kicking up my feet as I swept the kitchen floor or chopped vegetables. I also haunted thrift shops collecting a hodgepodge of clothing. Finally, I put on my assembled treasures: the fuchsia-red wig with corkscrew curls; the black cap and T-shirt; red, baggy pants inscribed in neon yellow and chartreuse with BAM! WOW! ZAP! BOOM!, and three-tone, red white and black shoes. I was stunned. The costume had created itself. My emerging character was a kind of urchin/teenager. She didn't reveal her name, but I was sure she would when she was ready.
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