My Clown Workshops
Are a Comin' to Texas!
I hope your holidays were marvelous and set you up with loved and gung-ho vibes to take into the New Year.
We had a lovely time here, chillaxing in cozy splendor and watching movies in our traditional Christmas fort while celebrating Hannukah, Alan’s 33rd, and Christmas. And the day after Christmas. And a little bit of the day after the day after Christmas, too!
Amidst all this celebrating, I’ve taken the first steps toward cultivating my garden of dreams. Now that I am officially downright free from the tethers of a job for job’s sake, I aim to go full-time with teaching clown workshops.
My teaching history goes back to middle school when I spent my summers teaching at a Montessori preschool. It started as a punishment, a version of “grounding,” if you will. I was caught sneaking out to go to an all-ages club (which now I realize was meant for 17+, not 13+), so my Mom required that I spend the rest of my summer teaching full-time at the preschool.
*Note that I was only caught because another parent who drove us half the way felt guilty and, after dropping us off, ratted me out! I did so well with the sneaky plan that my dad even told her, “No, they are here,” after peeping at me and my gal pal’s body-shaped stuffed animal replacements all tucked into our beds. She had to insist he go turn those covers over before the alarm was sounded in the Sanders household.
Anyway, I digress.
I have since taught off and on for children and art and improv and clown. The latter two only in the past four years. I was teaching theater and improv at the men’s prison of LA county when the pandemic shut everything down, and when schools came back in 2021 found a position teaching art at the West Hollywood Charter School. I couldn’t stand how we went about covid protocols with the kids and quit after three-quarters of a year. It was bad, real bad. It wasn’t teaching anymore; it was placating a terrorizing system and horrendously damaging the sensitive psyches of children all the while. After that, I found a place for myself in an immersive theater, performing and leading clown workshops.
I think I was always meant to teach. It always comes back to me, and me to it, somehow. And clown is certainly my light and gift to share! Combining my skills and gift, now that sounds like purpose to me. And aren’t we all ideally working towards embodying our purpose?
Step one is creating a pitch deck I will use to pitch to locals and organizations outside the improv and theater world. Clown is for everyone! And with clown everyone can only grow in their joy, wonder, and interpersonal skills. I’ve come to realize stage time for me is just an expansion of relationship. Another ring around the thing, if you will. It’s simply connecting with others on a bigger scale. And in this day and age, everyone could use more connecting.
My, I am excited to come back to myself in all this. I’ve missed it, feeling connected with and encouraged by my passion. I have felt so distant from the tenets of clown after my experiences of segregation within its world in LA over the past three years. Now, after six months in Texas and a few shows, and a job that often put me in strangers’ homes, and this, and that… I am starting the feel the tingles again. The tingles that I belong. I belong in my passions and my purpose and in my love of clown. Play isn’t so immediate as it was in 2019, but it’s there. Roiling under the surface, waiting all this time like tinder in hibernation. How I am grateful to have begun to feel the spark that lights me up again.