In this episode, host Beth Cougler Blom talks with Guillaume Vermette about his work as a therapeutic clown, using theatre, emotion, and deep listening to build human connection in long-term care homes. While the conversation doesn’t focus directly on facilitation, the skills Guillaume shares are highly relevant to facilitation practice.
Beth and Guillaume also talk about:
- Listening beyond words to honour people’s emotional realities
- The power of non-verbal communication and presence
- Working in pairs to create more opportunities for connection
- The five core qualities of clowning and how they relate to being human
- How authenticity and lightheartedness can impact well-being
Engage with Guillaume Vermette
- Website: https://www.GuillaumeVermette.com
- Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/guillaumevermette
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/guillaumevermette/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/clownhumanitaire
Connect with the Facilitating on Purpose Podcast
- Follow Facilitating on Purpose on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn or YouTube
- facilitatingonpurpose.com
Connect with Beth Cougler Blom
- Give feedback or suggest upcoming show topics or guests at hello@bcblearning.com
- Visit bcblearning.com to explore Beth’s company’s services in facilitation and learning design
- Purchase a copy of Beth’s book, Design to Engage
- Follow Beth on Instagram, Facebook, or LinkedIn
Podcast production services by Mary Chan of Organized Sound Productions
Show Transcript
[Upbeat music playing]
[Episode intro]
Beth 00:02
Hi there. Welcome to Facilitating On Purpose. I’m your host, Beth Cougler Blom. Thanks for choosing to spend some time with me and my guest today. In this episode, I’m really pleased to bring you Guillaume Vermette. Guillaume is both a humanitarian clown and a therapeutic clown. He came across my purview somehow, and I interviewed him. This is a bit of a different one for the podcast. I interviewed him actually many months ago in the middle of 2024. And when I’m recording this intro now, it’s April of 2025.
Beth 00:37
I sat on this for a little while because I actually interviewed Guillaume for another project that has sort of benignly stalled. [chuckles] But I didn’t want to lose the information from his interview. I didn’t want to just sit on the things that he shared with me in the conversation because I want all facilitators to hear what he had to say. I have this side—or maybe burgeoning, not so side anymore—interest in looking around at different fields and trying to think about what we can learn from them in order to apply it back to our work facilitating learning or facilitating meetings.
Beth 01:13
For a long time, I’ve been thinking about clowning, the profession of clowning, and how clowning is used in different ways. And I came across Guillaume and he seemed like a dynamic, interesting individual, which you will hear. [smiles] He absolutely is. And invited him to have this conversation with me on the podcast, which is what he did. I’ll warn you right now that I don’t even think I mention the word facilitation in this episode. We really focused on clowning itself, but I want you to listen at two levels here. When you hear Guillaume talk about clowning, I want you to think, hmm, what can I learn from that for facilitation? So even though we’re not really talking about facilitation, there is much to learn for our practice and our line of work. I hope you enjoy the episode. This is Guillaume Vermette, Lessons from a Therapeutic Clown. Enjoy the show.
[Episode start]
Beth 02:08
So I thought I could start by just asking you generally about what you do. What’s the nature of your work?
Guillaume 02:15
I’m a humanitarian clown since 18 years. I’ve worked in more than 40 countries. It’s quite challenging to explain in a brief way what is a humanitarian clown. There’s no word in the dictionary to describe what I do, and any job can be humanitarian.
Like you could be a humanitarian accountant, a humanitarian teacher, and there is many ways to do it by itself. So I think I should start by explaining what is a clown, [laughs] [Beth: OK] because that word is misunderstood, full of stereotype and prejudice, and there’s many ways to view it. I’m just going to tell you what’s my point of view on clowning.
Guillaume 02:58
I went to clown school in Montreal. I studied clowning, and clowning, in my opinion, is not funny, is not for kids, and a clown costume doesn’t exist. [Beth: Yeah, OK!] [They laugh] It can be funny, it can be for kids, and it can wear a costume, but this is not important, this is not essential. Clowning is just a type of theatre. It’s a specialty in the theatre field called physical theatre. We use less word, more movement, more face expression, and most of all we look at the public directly in the eyes. There’s no fourth wall. My goal when I’m clowning is not to be funny, is not to be interesting, it’s only to create a human connection with the public. It’s an emotional conversation.
Guillaume 03:44
And I also studied psychology. So I mix all these knowledges, interests, passion, etc., to try to, I don’t know, bring a little drop of difference in an ocean of problem on the planet. Therapeutical clowning, it’s working in duo. Two therapeutical clowns together in health care facilities. If I had to choose one word of all the words, this one that almost nobody uses is a [says in French] clown relationnel, a relational clown, a human connection clown. [Laughs]. Something like that. But these words exist, and it’s not only my opinion that matters, I’m part of a community doing this kind of work, so I go with the, I follow the group. Therapeutical clowning is the word that the Western world has been using a lot for clowns going in hospital.
Let’s keep it simple that instead of using clowning as a tool for connecting with people, or as a [in French] levier d’intervention. It’s an expression in French that it’s the tool you use to contribute to people’s well-being.
Beth 04:57
As you prepare, you said you work in pairs for this as well. So you never work alone, you always work in pairs? Why is that and how do you work to prepare together?
Guillaume 05:07
Having more people is rich. It’s having more opportunity to connect with the people we’re trying to connect with. But bringing more than two will be overwhelming and too much.
Because it’s a lot about authenticity. Clowning is a, and that’s, I didn’t explain in deep what is clowning, but it’s based on five qualities or attributes, way more stuff than that. We teach clowning for weeks just as an introduction. But those five points are really important to practice and to nourish, to be a good clown. And I also think to be a good human, but that’s a personal opinion. So there’s authenticity, openness, simplicity, [in French] légèreté… lightness?
Beth 05:53
Maybe lightheartedness or something? Yeah.
Guillaume 05:56
Yeah, something like that and I’m forgetting one: joy. So I said authenticity, so we don’t create a clown character, we don’t choose, you don’t get to clown school, hey this is a clown I’m gonna be. No I’m sorry, you are gonna be your actual flaws [laughs] that you have as a human being. That makes you stand out of a crowd in one second, that we can laugh about. That we can connect to. That makes you human and perfectly imperfect.
Guillaume 06:26
So you have to discover these aspects of yourself, you have to accept them enough that you can love them, to share them with the public so you laugh about them with you and not laugh at you. So the reason I’m explaining that with nursing home is that some people don’t like you and it’s okay [chuckles]. Some people don’t want to connect with what you actually are and it’s okay. So if you have two person, it’s double the chances of connecting with the person, but it’s very intimate what we do in nursing homes. It’s very intimate and sweet. We knock on the door, “Hello Madame Smith, we’re happy to see you. We just want to wish you a beautiful day, can we come in?”
Guillaume 07:11
Yes, we go in, that’s it. There’s no scenario, there’s no show, there’s nothing rehearsed. It’s the only thing that is repeating itself is that like, hi we’re happy to see you. Sometimes somebody doesn’t want to see me, maybe, or doesn’t like me for some reason or he’s having a bad day or I don’t know, I remind him of his brother-in-law that he hates. [laughs] So maybe it doesn’t work with me but it’s gonna work with my partner so he can have a nice connection with our partner, I can step back. And it’s okay if I’m useless. We are useful as a team. I’m just, I step back and they’re having a beautiful moment, I still contribute to that moment.
Beth 07:51
Let me ask you, how do you know, what signs do you get that someone doesn’t want to connect with you and might want to connect with another? Like what are you seeing?
Guillaume 08:00
Well, one that is very clear that we get some time is, [says loudly] “Fuck you! Go away.” [They both laugh.]
Beth 08:04
Okay, it’s quite obvious! [Laughs]
Guillaume 08:06
That does happen. Like, let’s not forget that 80% of the people living in CHSLD, the type of nursing home, the public system, they have a [in French] pertes neurocognitives, they have neuro-cognitive problems. Dementia, for example, Alzheimer, there’s all sorts of problems. So their brain is different. Their way of interacting and communicating is different. And that’s one of the reasons why the therapeutical planning works so well, because we use a different path of the neurons in the brain through emotion. And sometimes we can connect with people that nobody else is able to connect. But also sometimes their emotions are intense. They are weird, surprising. It can be a lot of anger. So we get these kind of reactions sometimes. [chuckles]
Guillaume 08:52
But sometimes they’re not able to say that they don’t want to see us. So the main skill required to be a good therapeutical clown is listening. The listening skills. We have to listen to everything. To my own emotion, how I’m in my body and my emotional…how my partner is doing, the pace, the other people working in there to not disturb their work. The person in front of us, yes, the words, but mostly the nonverbal signs, the eyes, and sometimes the physicality is telling you, you’re not welcome. It’s never a perfect science. Sometimes we make mistake, not big mistake. We try and we learn. Oh, when this person is doing that, it means she’s not happy or she’s happy. So we learn with time.
Guillaume 09:38
We go see the same people every week in the same CHSLD so we really get to connect with them and learn about them. And we don’t go there thinking we’re going to make them laugh. We go there thinking we’re going to contribute to their well-being and we’re going to forget everything we know about them from the last weeks.
Beth 09:55
Oh, you do? Oh.
Guillaume 09:56
As much as we can. [Beth: OK.] We still keep this information that can be useful. But because of situations like dementia, the reality right now, here and now can be so different than five minutes ago. So I have to concentrate on the here and now and listen.
Guillaume 09:57
And sometimes what they need is to express emotion like sadness and anger. And we can just welcome these emotions and be positive or sane. Exutoire, exitory, I’m not sure it’s an English word, a way to to concentrate this emotion and in a positive or sane way to express it. And maybe they feel trapped. They feel trapped in the nursing home and they kind of feel the need to [in French] de s’évader, deceive at, to evade themselves. So maybe we’re going to go in stories or imagination. Maybe they need to move. They’re stuck in a wheelchair. So we’re going to dance how we can with the fingers or something like that. Maybe they actually need to laugh and just have fun. And we’re going to try to make them laugh and have fun with them. But it’s just about a genuine, authentic connection with them.
And it’s beautiful. It’s so sweet. And often it’s just holding hands, kneeling down, saying, hi, Madame Smith, I’m so happy to see you. I love you. And you say that on repeat for 15 minutes and bye bye. [They laugh.]
Beth 11:14
Yeah, you said it’s quite intimate. I can see how it can be because in some cases you’re actually going into their room, their personal room at the facility and maybe other times you’re in more of a public space?
Guillaume 11:26
As much as we can we go in the room.
Beth 11:29
OK. Does it change the experience being in their space?
Guillaume 11:32
Yeah, they’re more vulnerable, they’re more authentic, they’re more open than if there’s other people watching around. It’s create a deeper connection, I will say, and for us, the room is not the room, it’s their house. [Beth: Yeah.] We consider it their house, we knock, we don’t sit on the bed. We ask permission if we really have to do, but you don’t go in somebody’s room, and somebody’s house, I mean, without knocking and you go sit on their bed, you know what I mean? [Beth: Yep.] It’s sacred, it’s their space, it’s their house.
And we call the corridor the main street, and we call the other people living there their neighbours, just bringing these words to influence our posture. And we’re the only people except some family members sometimes that come here just for fun. And it’s like, hi, I’m happy to see you. There’s no medical treatment, there’s no power position, there’s no expectation except, hey, we’re here for you for whatever you need, if you don’t want to see us, we go bye. But if you want, what do you want? Let’s do it together. And we don’t wear clown costume, by the way.
Beth 12:35
I was just going to say, do they, do they know you’re clowns? Like, do you say, Hey, we’re, you know, we’re therapeutic clowns or we’re clowns, or do you just come in as, as people who use clown techniques?
Guillaume 12:46
Well, we do have a clown technique and we wear the clown nose. The clown nose is considered a theatrical mask, the smallest of the mask. A mask has the purpose of hiding your face to show something else. The clown nose has the purpose of revealing more who you are [chuckles] and revealing more your emotion.
Guillaume 13:06
It brings all the focus on this big red dot in the middle of your face where all the emotion happens And we don’t have to use red nose in CHSLD but it’s useful because a lot of them are blind or partially blind and it helps them to focus on our face and see us. And it allows us to do more. Like it’s clear for them oh they’re clowns. Oh it’s not serious or they’re just clowns so their defence go down. We want to be as clowns the the last layer of the hierarchy of human society. [chuckles] It’s like the less we have credibility the more people defence will go down.
Guillaume 13:14
It’s like a superpower having no credibility. So we wear just a clown nose and our outfits are actual human clothes that people will wear in the 30s, 40s, 50s, like their period of time of the elderly we meet. So we do everything in our power to contribute to their well-being including what we wear. We use the same rigour, professionalism, and preparation that we will for a big show in Cirque du Soleil or whatever. This public deserve the same professionalism and dignity than any other public and respect so real human clothes from the 30s, the 40s, the 50s and I said earlier that listening is the main skills needed.
Guillaume 13:14
I think it’s interesting for you to know that two clowns of our therapeutical clown team—we’re 14 I believe right now—two of them are fully deaf.
Beth 13:14
Wow.
Guillaume 13:14
Fully deaf and I think I think they have amazing listening skills. I think deaf people usually have best listening skill than non-deaf people. It’s so easy to forget and I even struggle to believe that fact that 93% of communication is non-verbal. Even as a therapeutical clown I still struggle to understand fully that concept. 92% of communication is non-verbal!
Beth 13:14
It’s a lot yeah.
Guillaume 13:14
For us non-deaf people it’s easy to forget it’s easy we hide behind words all the time but deaf people they have no other choices than to focus on the non-verbal aspect of it to survive to function on society. So they’re overly aware of and of their space and listening to other people non-verbal communication to their emotion, other people emotion, they’re overly aware they have great listening skills and it makes them amazing therapeutical clown.
Beth 15:46
I can see that and you’re working in a pair. So maybe a deaf person and a non-deaf person are working together. So they would lip read, or would they be using sign language, or…?
Guillaume 15:57
Clowning is mostly non-verbal, so it fits well. Sometimes it’s like I will work with Jérôme, for example, who’s a deaf person, and I know some sign language so I can translate, but sometimes there are two deaf people together, and sometimes it’s one deaf and one non-deaf that know nothing of sign language. [laughs]
Beth 16:16
Yeah, yeah. And it works still.
Guillaume 16:18
It works. It has some challenges, but we figure it out. And because of that, sometimes they will have more success than us, because they rely less on the words.
And we have this tendency to go in words too quickly, the non-deaf people. And also, there’s one nursing home. We go in Montreal every week that has a corridor with only deaf people. So we have two deaf clowns that go doing therapeutic clowning for deaf people once a week. And I think that’s unique in the world, in the therapeutic clowning world. I’ve never heard of that before. And we’re really proud of that. It’s very meaningful.
Beth 16:57
I love that. And it sounds like you actually learn a lot from each other as well of working together. [chuckles] [Guillaume: Oh yeah.] The skills they have—actually, it was just at Island Deaf and Hard of Hearing Centre. And they said the same about deaf—people who are deaf on the job site, like a construction site. And you would think, Oh, that would be dangerous. Or they, you know, think maybe safety is an issue. No, actually, they said, well, deaf people, because they can’t hear, they often see a lot more visual cues or clues than that can avoid mistakes, right?
Guillaume 17:29
I’m not surprised.
Beth 17:29
Yeah. So your—similar thing, like they see so much more because they don’t hear—and we get lazy as hearing people. Anyway, that’s what they’re saying.
Guillaume 17:37
Yes, definitely. [chuckles]
Beth 17:37
Let’s go back to the preparation. So you said something about how you try to forget what you’ve heard before when you’re working with the person in their room. So whether you’ve seen that person or not before, what are you doing to prepare in the days leading up to that experience, in the hours or minutes leading up? Like what are some of those, you mentioned, it’s a professional practice basically. How do you prepare with yourself or with the other person you’re going in with?
Guillaume 18:04
I think I’m going to start by the training bit of it, because we’re all trained in first clown theatre, but then in therepeutical clown, the approach, the method, the challenges, the issues. We all had training in that before we start. And then before I go there, I have to be, or I say hi, but we have to make sure that we are emotionally available for it, physically and emotionally available. It is exhausting. [chuckles] It is demanding, I mean, emotionally and physically.
Guillaume 18:37
It’s a roller coaster of emotion and events you go through. Every door you go. So if I’m not in a good emotional or physical state, I have to cancel and get replaced by somebody else. There’s that. And when we get there, we arrive earlier. We arrive in costume already. It has to be neat because of hygiene and people, vulnerable people, and also to be fancy and beautiful for them. [laughs]
Beth 19:02
[Giggles] Nice, yeah. Of course. Respect, right?
Guillaume 19:04
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then we get there. We’re already in costume. We’re half an hour before it starts for some reason. One of the reasons is to take the time as a duo to say, hi, how are you today? How are you feeling? What’s up? Because you need a lot of trust and a good emotional connection between you and yourself, between you and your partner for this job to be efficient and to work well. And also to talk with the people working in the CHSLD. Hey, what’s happening today? How is it going in the CHSLD? Is there some issues we should know about? Oh, is this person dying? Is this person sick, et cetera? We have all sort of information coming to us. Oh, you should go see this lady because she had no visit for one month or two months. So we gather information.
Guillaume 19:57
But now we can have this kind of interaction with some CHSLD because they understand our work and we’ve been there for many years. But in a new place, it’s not like that. Like, people don’t understand nothing of clowning. So even more of a therapeutical clowning, they think we’re just there like birthday clowns to make people laugh. And so they see us arriving. Oh, don’t go see this mister, this man. He’s very angry. He’s upset today. Like, if you tell me he’s upset, it’s a good reason for me to go see it. [chuckles] That’s why I’m going to see him! [laughs] That’s what I work with. Or like, don’t go see this person. This person is dying. Like, well, I’m going to try. I’m going to try, if the family is open and welcome me. And I’m going to be very sweet. And it’s a huge privilege to share the last moment of somebody’s life and to be welcome there.
Guillaume 20:46
And I think that can be celebrated in a positive and joyful way if the family is comfortable with. So the preparation will be that. And once we get there, we have to stop in front of every room. We have the name of the person beside the room. OK, it’s Miss Smith or whatever. And I will recall what I know about this person, because sometimes there’s very important information that will influence so much my interaction, for example. Oh, this person is fully blind. [laughs]
Guillaume 21:21
This person has an injury on his knee. If I touch there, no, I cannot touch this person there. Or like, oh, this one has a tendency to be grabby with women. I will go first. And my partner, that is a woman, will wait for now. Oh, this person, I don’t know, as a very, very adult sense of humour or this person, a very childish sense of humour. So maybe at some point I will try to go in this direction. But it has to be very flexible and not take it for granted because I could get in the room and start with, I don’t know, a joke about vodka because I know usually this man is always offering invisible vodka shot to everybody. That’s an actual story. [They both laugh.] But if I arrive and already I propose something, it forbids the possibility that something else comes out of him. It has to come from him as much as possible. So, hi, I’m happy to see you and you see what happen from there. And if nothing happens, it’s OK. It’s not a problem. Just be there.
Beth 22:30
Would you say you’re more reactive then to things happening? You’re not necessarily proactive.
You’re not trying to drive the conversation or drive the experience. I’m kind of just using my hand to point at you if people are listening to this. So you’re reacting and choosing…
Guillaume 22:48
As much as possible. [Beth: Yeah.] They are the director of our show. They are in charge. We are at their service. It comes from them, and we bounce on it, with some exception because we work with people with neuro-cognitive problems. And some of them, we have fixation on very specific subject or stuff that sometimes brings negative emotion to them, like anger or sadness. For some reason, their brain can be stuck on one event in their life or something that never happened, and they think is happening right now.
Guillaume 23:27
And I could give you an example. There was this man. When I get there, he’s very angry. He’s having a fight with a nurse. He’s upset. There’s three kids. There’s three kids. They’re homeless. They need food. They need food. They need clothes. We have to help them right now.
And the nurse is like, no, stop. There’s nobody! And whoa, they’re in a big fight. So I interrupted the fight and just started to walk with that guy that I always have walked with him. When I go there, he loves to walk. So our job, we try to never say no. Never say no to anything. But right now, it’s bringing him a lot of pain. It’s bringing a lot of pain.
Guillaume 23:49
So I will say yes, but [pauses] I will validate what he’s going through, but trying to bring the focus somewhere else. And this one was quite easy to bring a focus somewhere else. It was a solution to his problem. So it was like, there’s three kids. They’re homeless. They have no clothes. They need food and clothes. They’re like, yeah, yeah, yeah, you’re right. But don’t worry. I gave them clothes. I gave them food. Now they are right.
Really? Yeah. OK. There’s three kids. They need food. They need clothes. Don’t worry. You’re right. You’re right. I gave them clothes. I gave them food. They are right now. There’s three kids. And repeat for one hour. You will just repeat that and I will repeat the exact same answer. And with time, there will be more time in between each time you repeat it. And at the end, it will be over.
Guillaume 23:49
But sometimes it’s about you say yes to something or you use a word she’s using to bring the focus somewhere totally else. Like, wow, the sun is beautiful. You’re the frames with their family. Like, wow, is that your son? We tried to bring the focus somewhere else because what they’re focusing on is having a big negative impact on them.
Beth 25:21
How do you take care of yourself? I mean, you mentioned it’s difficult work, it’s hard. Sometimes you realize you can’t go that day because you’re not ready for it. But, you know, the days that you are and it happens and I don’t know, do you do things afterwards or during to take care of yourself? It’s very emotional for you.
Guillaume 25:41
I’ll call him depression. [They both laugh.]
Beth 25:42
Yeah, I hope not!
Guillaume 25:48
It is not for everybody, this kind of job. One of the reason is that we meet people that die constantly. You get attached to people that die because it’s normal to die at this age and this kind of institution. It’s the end of their life. It’s one of the reasons we work as a team. Two by two is we can take the time to express our emotion and be there for one and the other. And we’re part of a bigger team of 14 therapeutical clowns that meet every month altogether, where we continue training together, but also if something happen that needs to be shared to the team, we take the time to do it. Sometimes it’s emotion, sometimes it’s difficult cases, let’s call it that way, and we exchange tips and advice. It’s very important that we are a team and we share and that you respect your limit. When it’s too much, you stop. Somebody else is going to do the work for a while. We provide the organization therapeutical help, psychologist services, when any of us need for any reason. And I think it’s kind of needed to be a therapeutical clown. You have to take care of yourself. You have to have healthy habits in your life. It’s the therepeutical for you mainly. [laughs]
Beth 27:08
Is it part of the draw of doing that work? Like it helps you in some way too?
Guillaume 27:13
Well, the part that is inevitable is that if you want to be a clown with this kind of approach, you have to learn about yourself and accept it. So just that you’re digging [chuckles] and your vulnerabilities and your pain sometimes and your past. Oh, this is who I am and this is how I’m going to use it as a clown. It feels like we’re naked, emotionally naked as clowns. So just that is a very therapeutical.
And if you want to have a good connection, you want to be successful, you need a good connection with yourself, with your partner, with the others. So you have to be available and ready for that. So it’s kind of inevitable that you have to nourish good habits to make it possible. In my experience, therapeutical clowns are very attracting people in their everyday life. Attracting in the sense that it feels good to be around them. It’s like they feel like they’re feeling good with themselves. [laughs] And they’re not necessarily funny in the sense of a stand up comic guy. But they’re fun. They’re fun to be around. They’re open. They’re light-hearted. The five point I said earlier.
Beth 28:29
The five…I was just thinking of that! It’s about being a human being really, isn’t it?
Guillaume 28:34
Yeah, to be good at connecting with other people. So that’s, that’s therapeutical for me.
Beth 28:38
Yeah. It feels like you have to be so strong, like you’re an inner strength or stability or something there. Like that helps you do your work maybe.
Guillaume 28:48
Yeah. And just about the posture, like it’s very physical.
I’ve been talking about a lot about emotion, but the physicality of clown also, it becomes like a habit in your everyday life. If somebody speak to me…listening position, [Beth laughs] looking in the eyes. Like I’ve been trained for that.
Beth 29:03
Yeah, yeah! It’s hard on Zoom [Guillaume: Yeah] because, you know, we have to kind of figure out where the camera is, don’t we? [Guillaume laughs.] Can’t look in the eye as much, but yeah.
What about, are there mistakes that you can make where you, you know, you can see it in your partner maybe, or you can see it in yourself, like, and you go, oh, that, I should not have done that, or that’s a trap you can fall into. Anything coming up there?
Guillaume 29:26
There’s some mistakes. There’s thousands of traps, because it’s never perfect. The more I learn about it, the more I do therapeutical clown, the less I do. The more I realize less is more. And just being there and the five points I named earlier is enough, just connecting with the person. I don’t need to do anything. I just need to do less to be more.
Guillaume 29:51
Yeah, and I think it’s the same for most of us. With times, with years, we’re more comfortable with nothing happening. And just looking in the eyes and the joy, I’m happy to see you. And there’s nothing happening. And new clowns are like, I have to be funny, I have to fill the void [laughs]—because this is what the society teaches us. These are more like improvement. There’s a lot of traps, but mistakes. There’s a few. There’s a few that are possible.
Guillaume 30:24
One, a very common one, that is a small mistake. It’s not like a huge problem, is, hi, how are you? Clowning is not about being polite. It’s about being authentic. We spend a lot of time being polite instead of being nice [laughs] in society. There’s no place for that in clowning! We hide the fact that we’re not nice with politeness. [laughs] But clowning is offering, proposing something authentic and joyful and nice.
Hi, I’m happy to see you. It’s honest. I’m really happy to see you. I have to feel it. Hi, how are you? Not, “I’m fine, and you? Yeah, good. OK, bye.” We don’t even know why we say that. It’s automatic. It’s like an habit in our culture.
Guillaume 30:39
But there’s many reasons why we shouldn’t say that in CHSLD. First, often it’s not really authentic. We don’t really think that’s not why we’re here. Second, a lot of them don’t know if they’re doing well because they’re confused. And some really don’t go well, don’t feel well. And we’re influencing them to focus on the negative aspect of it by, how are you? “Bad.” Oh, shit. Yeah. [laughs]
Beth 31:39
Yeah, crash and burn right away. [laughs]
Guillaume 31:41
And when you ask questions, you orientate the conversation. You have some kind of power with a question. It’s a small power, but you have some power.
We want it to come from them as much as possible. But I think when you ask a question, you are in some kind of position of power necessarily. You decide and orientate at least a little bit the conversation or where it’s going. And we want the less power possible and give them as much power possible. We will ask some questions sometime. We try to avoid it as much as possible. It comes from them and a subject they bring. And maybe we know they can speak, they can understand. OK, we’ll bring a question that empowered them.
Beth 32:23
Oh, so you try not to ask questions? So you would make statements.
Guillaume 32:27
Yes. [Beth: Oh, interesting.] Always. Always. Something honest coming from me that I offer. Wow, I will be impressed by what I say, wow, that’s amazing. We will not ask them about their story. We will not ask them about what they like, etc. We have to guess it to listen. And if somebody, I don’t know, let’s give a specific example. Somebody will say, oh, I was working in the farm when I was a young boy like you. I don’t know something like that. Maybe it’s an opportunity instead of asking a question, oh, did you have pigs or something like that? I love pigs. You just need to say it. And it’s not so much about what you say and what you do, but more about the emotion that comes out of it. Because let’s remember at the base of everything, it’s an emotional connection. In clowning what you do is not important. It’s how you do it and how is by being yourself.
Beth 33:20
You said “honest”, so that you’re not, it’s not theatre. You’re not making it up. You’re being honest about the things that you say in that moment.
Guillaume 33:28
It’s theatre in the sense that it’s a theatrical technique, and I’m only a clown actor. I’m not trained in typical theatre, but from what I understand from typical theatre, there’s a lot in common in the sense, if you’re a good actor, you’re not supposed to pretend. You’re supposed to open doors inside yourself to allow yourself to go in these place instead of pretending.
Beth 33:54
Yeah. How do you think people could dip their toe into learning about what you do? Like, is there something that people can just try, experience? Can they see you in action in the work that you do? It seems very private. [Guillaume: Yes.] Like, it’s hard to see you doing this work. How do people learn a little bit about it?
Guillaume 34:13
Well, the clowning bit is more available because there’s a lot of clown schools, clown workshops and training all around the world and all around Canada. The therapeutical clowning is more difficult, maybe on video, like sometimes we will have a newbie following us and watching from far away or a reporter, but they have to be so subtle because a fly in the space is a lot at CHSLD. [laughs] It’s uneven by itself, so it’s almost impossible to not be noticed by them and it influences necessarily the connection. Because they might be less inclined to open, to be vulnerable when they know a stranger is there.
Guillaume 34:55
So it’s difficult, but we give therapeutical clown initiation classes, training, because a lot of people are curious about it, because a lot of people want to learn it, not necessarily to become therapeutical clowning, but because all this approach has so much to contribute in your personal life, but in some other professional fields also, this attitude and this principle of a therapeutical clown can contribute so much.
Guillaume 35:26
So we give this class, I give it with a partner called Fred, where people don’t need any experience. They come, we give them the basic of clowning on fast forward and then the basic of therapeutical clowning and at the end, the last day, we bring them in a CHSLD, in a nursing home so they can try it with supervision of professional being around just in case. And most of the time it’s a powerful experience and sometimes life-changing experience for some people. They burst into tears at the end and it’s a mix of emotion and it’s realizing how bad is the situation.
Guillaume 36:04
I think that’s a humanitarian crisis, the CHSLD system in Quebec, that’s the word I use. I think people are dying of loneliness and I think Quebec is the world champion of systemic ageism, sorry, difficult for me to say. Well, from all the countries I’ve seen and all the places in the world, I think we’re the champions. [laughs] So our nursing home, so there’s a shock just going there for the first time for many people.
Guillaume 36:34
And then it’s realizing I have so much to offer and I can have a great impact just by being myself. I don’t need to do nothing almost, so it’s like [makes an ugh sound] it kind of breaks the matrix. [laughs] After they’re a bit confused, they’re like, they need time and sometimes they come back for classes that are more advanced. They realize a lot about themselves often doing this.
Beth 37:03
Yeah, I can see that, very introspective work. Yeah. Lots of self-awareness there for sure, it seems like. Wow. Oh my gosh. I could keep just talking with you for hours. [Guillaume laughs heartily.] What a gift, what a wonderful job you appear to have, just knowing a little bit about it, yeah.
Guillaume 37:23
Yeah. I love it so much. Thank you for your interest into it.
[Episode outro]
Beth 37:29
Oh, it was such a gift to be able to sit down with Guillaume and hear about his work as a therapeutic clown. You heard him start off saying that he is also a humanitarian clown. And honestly, we spent so much time really digging into the therapeutic side of his clowning work that we never got to circle back [chuckles] to talk about the humanitarian side of his clowning. And I’d love to know more about that in the future.
Beth 37:52
But the richness that he shared with me, and all of us. around his therapeutic clowning work can give us a lot to think about in terms of our work as facilitators, working with individuals or working with groups. I mean, he talked about non-verbal signs. He talked about having and dealing with emotions, sometimes intense emotions. He talked about listening skills. He talked about taking care of yourself in the work. He talked about movement and how humour plays into his work and so much more. Really, it came down to authentically trying to connect with another person or persons when they go and visit people in these long-term care facilities. So again, I hope you listen to this episode not thinking you’re going to be a therapeutic clown, but that there are skills there that we can learn from people such as Guillaume and his colleagues that we can absolutely turn back on ourselves and think about whether we are doing that in our work for the benefit of ourselves and our participants.
Beth 39:00
One of the most interesting comments I think he shared with me was that his colleague who is deaf actually could be better at his job than Guillaume is, who is not deaf and an abled hearing individual. And that just tells me that the skill of listening doesn’t need ears and the skill of connection doesn’t need talking. There’s so much in that one tiny story that we can learn and take forward and enhance our work with that. Again, I’d like to thank Guillaume Vermette for coming on the show and chatting with me about his very worthwhile work and I hope you benefited from it as well.
Beth 39:14
On the next episode of the podcast, I talk with Leanne Joe and Amea Wilbur from the University of the Fraser Valley here in British Columbia. They’ve been creating a course together about Indigenous pedagogies for learners in an adult education undergraduate program. What I found so valuable about this conversation is that even though I don’t work in academic anymore, I still learned things about Indigenous ways of knowing and being that I can bring into my work. I think you’ll feel the same, so I invite you to join us then for that conversation.
[Show outro]
Thank you for listening to Facilitating on Purpose. If you were inspired by something in this episode, please share it with a friend or a colleague to help them expand their facilitation practice too. To find the show notes, give me feedback or submit ideas for future episodes, visit facilitatingonpurpose.com. Special thanks to Mary Chan at Organized Sound Productions for producing this episode. Happy Facilitating!
