Sunshine's Clown Alley: June 13 - 24, Omaha, NE

For five years in a row, Judy “Dear Heart” Quest, the college counselor at Duchesne Academy in Omaha, Nebraska, and a professional clown, opens her house and her heart to a summer service project that teaches high school teenagers the art of service clowning.  The teenagers come from any number of the twenty-two schools within the Network of the Sacred Heart.  This year, the new clowns were Mary “Dorie” Kable, Mary Cate “Pippi” Raynor, and Sarah “Seymour” Stephan from Duchesne Academy in Omaha, Nebraska; Allison “Mimi” Sullivan and Julia “Carbo”Scobbo from Newton Country Day School in Boston, Massachusetts; Clare “Clare Bear” McCarrick, Katie “Pepper” Eisenberg, and Libby “Susie” Henry, from Convent of the Sacred Heart in Greenwich Connecticut; and Lizzy “Fluffer Duffer” Duffy, Molly “Spazzy” Wolfe, and Emily “Loopy Lulu” Allen from Convent of the Sacred Heart in New York, New York. Together, they formed Sunshine’s Clown Alley.

For the first week of the project, the girls were taught basic one-on-one clown skills such as balloons, face painting, and story telling.  A team of professional clowns also came from around the country to instruct them on more performance-based skills including juggling, dancing, and skit work.  Daisy “Nutley” Giunta, the dance instructor at Newton Country Day School, spent her second summer with the clown troupe.  She helped to choreograph the clown show that Sunshine’s Clown Alley would perform at each service site, and served as a mentor to the students.  Cheri “Cherri-Oats” Venturi, the president of Clowns of America International, also spent her second summer with the project, donating wigs to each of the girls and offering expert advice in each of the skill areas.  Beyond developing their clown characters, the girls visited sites such as the University of Nebraska Medical Center, Mercy Psychiatric Hospital, and Monroe Meyer Recreation Program to talk with experts about the specifics of clowning for people with medical concerns of all varieties.

The second week in Omaha, the girls woke up early each morning, put on their makeup, and clowned for two to three service sites.  At most of the sites, they performed their show, and then had time to visit with people individually.  Because of the physical and emotional stress of clowning for so many different types of people, the girls had the nights of the second week free, but would gather together to reflect, discuss, and pray about each day’s activities before bed.

In commemoration of the fifth year of Sunshine’s Clown Alley, I felt I needed to step out of a purely training role and really expose the many facets of beauty within this process to an audience larger than the select students and the people whom they touch with their clowning.  I invited a good friend, Thomas “Snappy” Lee, from Northwestern University to come and document the project thru photographs.  Each night after the reflection-meetings, he put together a slide show of his photographs for the girls to view.  As the days progressed, we noticed that more and more of the narrative of the project was coming through the girls’ reactions to these pictures of themselves.  As the photographs presented to them not only the bright colors and laughter of their new characters, but the oxygen tanks, skeptical looks, and quieter moments existing in the background of their clowning visits, Tom and I began to see the experience as a dichotomy of moments of light and moments of shadow, and the real journey of the students as a relationship between the two extremes.  The following excerpt is from a piece developed by Tom and myself exploring both the light and shadow of Sunshine’s Clown Alley 2005.
-Laura “Happy Heart” Quest
 
...The halls of Educare are bright and plastered with colorful art projects.  They have the same sort of sloppiness and ease of the pieces of my childhood, and I can tell that these kids are happy.  Lucky.  Suzy Buffet founded this place—that’s the millionaire’s wife.  I wonder if she’s ever been here, or if she just signed the checks. There is a tug on my pocket, and a delicate little black girl gasps a little in excitement as she sees my whole face.
“I like your hair,” she says bravely, and then takes a quick step back.

“I like yours too,” I respond.  Then I look down at her hair.  It’s braided in perfect symmetrical rows like the weave of my wig, but that doesn’t exactly seem like something I should mention.  It feels awkward like the first day of high school.  I reach into my pocket for my magical foam bunnies.  The little girl smiles anxiously.

Dear Heart said sometimes it’s just enough for a clown to be herself.  There doesn’t always have to be a trick. So I crouch down instead, reach my hand out, and smile back just as she were any new friend.  “My name’s Sunshine.  What’s yours?”

“Laquisha.”

“Well, hi, La…La…”  I hadn’t quite heard it.  “Well, hi!  Did you like our clown show?”

“I liked the dancing,” she responds, twisting her shoulders back and forth.  I do it a little too and she laughs.  “Do you want your face painted?”  She nods her head just slightly enough to not lose eye contact.  “What would you like?”

“Purple!”

“Right.  But do you want like a heart or a balloon or what?”  She shrugs.  I dip my brush in the purple and instead of answering she closes her eyes.  She trusts me.  More than I trust myself at this point.  I glide the tip of the brush along the perfect skin of her cheek, improvising.  She leans her head ever so slightly into the cool sensation of the paint—into the warmth of the palm of my hand.  She quivers as if she hasn’t been touched in awhile.  I want to take her home with me and warm her whole heart.  But I’m just a kid too, really, so all I can give her is a moment of my magic.  Draw that heart instead and hope she understands...

The entirety of this project can be found at http://www.stylocreations.com/sunshine.html.   Please visit to see an assemblage of photographs and words exploring Sunshine’s Clown