What We Do

The Hearts & Noses Hospital Clown Troupe is specially trained to invite children into Clown World, providing relief for sick children and their families. While our visits are certainly entertaining, as clowns, we strive to do more.

The central goal of our clowns is to engage, empower and give choices to the children. This is an enormous gift to children, who seldom are given choices about their care in the hospital.

In our type of clowning, the child is constantly engaged and empowered. We invite the child to make choices, to supply the magic word to do a magic trick, or to direct a “clown symphony.”

Our clowns offer silly improvised poems using the child's name, offer the child magical marionette strings to make a clown dance around, or sing the child’s favorite song.

As clowns, our main game is to have problems with every single thing we do. Obstacles are a clown’s delight. This also empowers the child because they tell us how to do it correctly! Our clowns learn over 60 playful routines and other shticks they can do with the children, but the real key to our way of clowning is to play together with the child in that silly-wonderful place, Clown World.

Founded in 1997, our Troupe now has 16 volunteers who are trained in doing improvisation-based,
child-centered, hospital clowning. We have formed a special relationship with nationally recognized Boston Medical Center where we clown regularly. The Troupe also regularly visits the Franciscan Children’s Hospital, Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital, the Massachusetts Hospital School, and participates in many related parties and events for children who are ill.