Clowning & Caring in Ecuador 2013
January 7 to 13, 2013
Dear Clowns!!!
Come clowning, loving, playing, laughing at the equator line, where the hemispheres of care and activism join together to re-design our caring characters and a new desirable society!
Patch Adams MD and the clowns-performers-composers of the School for Designing a Society invite you to join them in the annual clown trip to Ecuador, for daily clowning in hospitals, clinics and streets, clown-skill-building workshops, and red noses amazement!
The Experience
The ExperienceEcuador, on the equator in northwestern South America, is one of the seventeen megadiverse countries, hosting a great variety of endemic species of flora and fauna. Its 2009 constitution is the first in the world to ensure Rights of Nature (ecosystem rights). The capital city of Quito (where we'll be) has been named a World Heritage Site for having the best maintained and least changed historic city center in Latin America.
The tour will combine daily clowning with daily workshops in care and inquiry into the locale of our clowning. In addition to clowning and care in clinical settings, there will be daily practical workshops in clown technique, love strategy and reflection on where we are.
Themes
The Red Badge of Courage: the Clown and the Nose The politics of 'help': exactly who am I 'helping' when I clown? 'Them'? 'Me'? 'It?' Charity versus bi-directional care. Clowning as anti-hierarchical intervention, clowning as invitation to social chaos, as a trick to bring love close, as warming up public spaces.
The Art of Making small things BIG, so as to make BIG THINGS small Clowning as a way of making small things (small actions of kindness, simple props, "fictional" premises) BIG in order to make BIG things (overwhelming grief, pain) small. Clowning as a way to invert a disproportionate relationship between joy and suffering.
What is YOUR love STRATEGY? A 3-hour workshop with Patch Adams: how love is thoughtful action, not only emotional expression. Discussion on how to design strategies for showing and engendering 'love'. Hands on exercises.
WHERE AM I? Eyes on Ecuador, I: Where are we? What is it? Who are 'we' in it? How to 'look a system' when visiting another country briefly? Discussion of the economic, historical, ecological, cultural, compositional life of Ecuador.
W(here I am!!!)HERE AM I? Eyes on Ecuador, II: discussion of domains of personal, communal, public. New questions for old answers, new answers for old questions.
Synthesis of our week's experience Talk back sessions in small and large groups: Have I changed? Has it? What's my next step?
Instructors/Facilitators
Patch Adams—entered medical school in 1967 to use medicine as a vehicle for social change; promotes and practices living a life of public joy as a revolutionary act; fount of ideas for avoiding burn-out in long-term social justice and health. Enthusiator.
Mark Enslin—composer, actor, bassoonist, guitarist, oud player, apprentice tabla player, listener, teaching composition facing the power of the respondent, assignment as an art form.
Melanie Meltzer— clown and scholar, mover and steadier, catalyst.
Dario Solina— composer, performer, writer, videomaker, communication designer, since 2010 performs his clown everywhere, every second; Vulnerability for Revolutionaries, teaches the art of Emphasis, MetaClowning maestro.
Further playful readings on clowning:
- Re-Designing the Character of the Care-Actor by Susan Parenti
- Metaclown by Jacob Barton
General Tour Information:
Cost: $1400 covers food, lodging, all educational and clowning events, and transportation within the country. This fee does not include your transporation to Ecuador.
Travel: Please meet us in Quito and arrive by the evening of January 6. You can plan to leave Ecuador on January 13, or later if you prefer to stay and travel.
Registration and Payment: The full fee or deposit can be paid online via secure Paypal account HERE
OR with a check payable to Gesundheit! Institute and mailed to: Melanie Meltzer. Please email Dario for details.
Passports: No visa is required. Passports can be expedited by your local post office. Please bring two color photocopies of your passport with you.
Vaccines: The following vaccines are recommended: Hepatitis A, Hepatitis B. Typhoid, Measles Mumps Rubell (MMR) and Tetanus-diphtheria.
Forms: All forms must be notarized and emailed to Dario at dario@patchadams.org.
Downloadable Forms
We ask you to fill out the following forms:
