It is important to clarify that a Gestalt clowning workshop is not like a clown workshop – one thing is to build a workshop with the purpose of helping participants find ‘their own clown.’ It is another thing is to lead a Gestalt therapy workshop where clown exercises are used with the purpose of supporting clients’ self-discovery.
 
That said, it is not unusual to see a clown teacher, or a gestalt therapist combine elements of these two disciplines. The reason for this is that both arts, for the most part, share the same foundations: experience counts the most; power is in the present; therapist or clown-master is his own instrument and both disciplines are relational. Therefore, when the clown teacher uses gestalt techniques to support the discovery of the clown (eg. exaggeration; staying with the feeling, etc.), similar to a gestalt therapist, he is increasing the power of the experience of the participant. On the same note, the gestalt therapist can use clown exercises as catalysts for individual work or for promoting interactions between members of a therapy group (eg. the clown entrance).
 
In addition, training in clown relies on exercises in order to stimulate or find the desired qualities of the clown game, whereas Gestalt relies on experiments as a platform for the client/therapist to obtain knowledge or new awareness about the client’s functioning. The difference between an exercise and an experiment is that the exercise is there to achieve or search for a desired outcome, whereas, the operating motive of an experiment grows out of the interaction between the client and the therapist, emerging within the dialogic process and has no attachment to an outcome. The intent is to shed light on the person’s resources or to facilitate awareness. In this context, one never knows what he is going to discover – this is the unknown, the great mystery. And this, I believe, is the key orientation of a program in Gestalt and Clown.
 
– Mario Lourenco

Mario Lourenco is the leader of the upcoming Gestalt and Clown workshop. Click here for more information or to register.