Contents

Part 1: Background - How we got here

The history of this month’s topic for The Developing Group can be traced to a ‘how to become a clown’ course recommended to Penny by Carol Thompson.  Her description sounded so interesting that last year Marian Way and Penny attended a 5-day introduction called The Courage to Be presented by clown Vivian Gladwell of Nose to Nose (www.nosetonose.info). This is not pie-in-the-face, circus clowning, but rather about participants discovering and portraying their own ‘clown within’ through improvisation.  

Marian and Penny loved the clowning and they were also intrigued with how Vivian directed, coached and facilitated people in real time while they were on stage learning to clown.  Two things resulted: Marian decided to model Vivian’s general approach to facilitating people to learn clowning, while Penny decided to focus on Vivian’s real-time ‘in-the-moment directing’.  So in true Penny fashion, James was ‘persuaded’ (along with Phil Swallow) to attend a two-day Introduction to Clowning course.  (Just for fun, take a moment to imagine James with a red nose on!)

Apart from observing Vivian during the course, he kindly agreed to be interviewed (by Marian with us present) so we could get more idea of what went on ‘behind the scenes’ in Vivian’s mind.

As a result, we created a prototype model of Vivian’s ‘In-the-Moment Directing’ which we adapted to training/learning applications other than clowning — starting with developing Symbolic Modelling skills.  We have trialed our model at two West Country Clean Language Practice Groups, and are presenting it at The Developing Group to give the group a chance to experience it for themselves and for us to get feedback on the model we are creating.