Happy Halloween! The Community is invited to attend The Trunk Treat & Boo House at the Sports Club on Oct. 18th. This is an annual Fun Event and our clown troupe has been there every year. The kids and parents all had a great time showing off their fabulous costumes and it was so exciting to see parents dressed in all sorts of outfits! Halloween is no longer just for the kids to enjoy, so come out and have some fun with us!’
I’m hoping to do a “Red Nose Reader” event at the YMCA for their pre-school classes in October. Since there are always new 3–4-year-olds attending in the fall, we introduce them to clowns in a great way. What can we do to demonstrate that our clowns are not scary, especially since this year is anticipated to be the scariest Halloween ever. I read that more horror movies will be out this fall than ever before, and of course that means more publicity and advertising for terrifying events. Personally, I have never liked horror movies. In fact to this day I can’t watch “The Birds”! My biggest concern is for kids under 5 who are so easily frightened by strange faces and body images. Make-up is so readily available now and has grown more gruesome every year. I remember about 50 years ago I was part of an amateur theater group in Paramus, N.J. and we performed at the high school with musical show tunes. Well that year I volunteered to be the wicked witch in The Wizard of Oz. My goal was to look ugly and I had a green nose made by a crafts person, which to me was very unattractive. Along with green face coloring and dots that looked like warts, I thought I was very scary. Comparing that face to present day scary faces it was really nothing. However, I would never appear in anything even like that today. We prefer to not use a lot of black or other dark colors in either our faces or our costumes. Traditional clown makeup is white, red with blue or black to outline parts of the eyes. You rarely see a female or male clown with heavy black eyebrows. Generally the eyebrows are covered with white grease paint and lines are drawn on the forehead to create eyebrows so when you raise your real eyebrows up the face becomes very animated. It’s all part of the fun in designing your own special facial features for becoming a clown!
Returning to the preschoolers – On our first visit to a class with new children, we enter with no make-up and almost normal clothing. We have a special Red Nose Reader shirt which we always wear and some kind of pants that are colorful, but not really clowny. We introduce ourselves using our real first names and ask if anyone has ever seen a clown. We get a big show of hands and at least one child will call out “clowns are scary.” This gives us the opportunity to tell them that anyone can be a clown. We have a special “chant” that we repeat frequently during the session that goes like this. “Who can be a clown?” “Mommies and Daddies, Grandmas and Grandpas, Kids, Friends, and Teachers!” By the end of the 40-minute session, the kids are joining us in reciting this simple but meaningful slogan, and they understand it – because we show them how we become a clown, right there in full view. As we put on our faces we demonstrate how our look changes, especially when we put on our red noses. Then we pull out of our special red nose carryon bag which is filled with costume items we have brought. I usually have a colored vest, a tie or flower for my neck, a funny hat, (no wig), clown fingertip-less gloves, and I always bring my big clown shoes which the kids love. Then we introduce ourselves with our clown names, and the kids have seen for themselves how “anybody can be a clown.” The looks on their faces as we change into clowns is always priceless, and all we see is happiness and joy. After that we read a story, do some magic, sing some songs, and make balloon hats for all the kids and teachers. It’s a wonderful 40 minutes of great personal fulfillment!
I hope this description of how easy it is to become a clown will intrigue some of you enough to contact me and learn about joining us in our fabulous endeavor to bring more joy into the world.
That’s it for this month. Hope to see you on Oct. 18th!
