Near Lyon, hospital clowns at the bedside of young patients – Liberation
At the Femme-Mère-Enfant hospital, the clowns Dom and Lolo go from room to room to amuse the young patients and make them forget, for a moment, their daily lives.
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The cheekbones smeared with pink, a little black to mark the eyebrows, a touch of white on the eyelids: after having put on their brightly colored costumes, Dom and Lolo make up their faces in front of the sink mirror. A locker room at the Woman-Mother-Child Hospital in Bron (the HFME, attached to the Hospices Civils de Lyon) serves as a dressing room for unpacking their belongings. The artists did not give each other the word, but their ties are matched, both with polka dots. Lolo adjusts his cap, his suspenders and his badge of “rigology specialist”. Dom puts on a mini Superman backpack, then the shoulder strap of his guitar. The surgical mask is de rigueur but embellished with a red nose. The two clowns are ready. As soon as they walk through the locker room door, their voice and their gait change, they are in their roles.
Dom has become the august Bertrand, Lolo is called Jean-Pierre Baudelaire on stage. These characters, that makes respectively five and seize and that they polish it between the walls of hospitals of the Rhone, the Isère, the Ain or the Loire. When they are not performing their shows within their theater companies, Dom and Lolo are among the sixteen professional artists employed by the Doctor Clown association. Created in 1995 in Tassin-la-Demi-Lune (Lyon metropolis), it operates in around fifteen pediatric establishments to visit nearly 15,000 children at regular intervals per year. “Each time, it’s a challenge to make it work. But when it works, at the end of the day, you know why you’re there.” says Dom.
entertainment bubble
Faced with young patients, the clowns constantly improvise. Some patients are too tired or too anxious for their antics to hit home. Most of the time, the actors – always in duos – are expected on the floors. They can even be called upon by the medical teams to accompany care, during their presence, “Between sophrology and clowning”, allows “To divert attention”, says Lolo. During the first months of the health crisis, the artists’ room at the hospital was suspended. “We really missed them. I really like having them, what they do is not a treatment in the technical sense but it is part of the treatment, underlines Isabelle Laroche, childcare nurse and health manager at the HFME. It brings joy, escape, it helps patients to decenter, to get out of pain, and it removes parental anxiety.
Before amusing the gallery, Dom and Lolo do the “relief” with the service educator. They glean the first name and age of the children, some information on their state of health or their ability to communicate, in order to adapt their game. That day, they begin their tour with the room of a 12-year-old girl , with motor and cerebral disabilities. By opening the door, her mother slips that the little one loves when the objects fall. Jean-Pierre Baudelaire immediately steals his cap, then slips his big bag over his feet. The little girl bursts out laughing. Bertrand strums his guitar, his accomplice dances before bumping into the door. It’s the mother’s turn to curl up.
“For families, these are small valves, small windows”, explains Dom. “Our responsibility is not to heal but to be in the moment. The disease emerges from childhood; we bring them back,” abounds Lolo. Feeling the state of mind of this public which does not always expect this bubble of entertainment, finding the right repartee and not refraining from trying new “tricks”: this performance requires being in the know. listening, to adapt. And not to formalize when it does not take. In another room, a teenager coolly welcomes the clowns. “He’s a bit tall, isn’t he?” his mother grimaces. Bertrand and Baudelaire row for five minutes but end up making the young man smile with a few (almost) successful magic tricks.
“Do something useful”
Faced with a boy of about ten years, the clowns chain the jokes: “What is green and grows in the sea? You find ? A sea kale! And what is green and grows at the bottom of the garden?” Good audience, mother and son try answers. In a crib, an 8-month-old baby is captivated by Bertrand’s soft melody, while Baudelaire blows soap bubbles. The mother is delighted to exchange jokes with the duo. “It’s good what you do, it brings joy, it’s really de-stressing”, does she slip. “People often think that all you have to do is put on a red nose and tagada tsoin tsoin! Hospital clown, it’s a job, you have to be on top from the first room and then hold on for three hours, “ emphasizes Laurence Chanove, director of Doctor Clown.
The association operates with an annual budget of 500,000 euros. Apart from a minimal public subsidy, 95% of the funds expected from private donations, sponsorship and revenue generated by events. Comedians, musicians, magicians from street theater or cabaret, they benefit from the follow-up of a trainer, Emmanuel Sembély, a clown himself, and a psychologist, who leads a collective debrief every month. “There were moments of doubt. The association supported me well,” salute Lolo, who started in 2006 with the desire to “to do something useful”. “You never know, he continues. You can live very hard days in some services and come out of another with a sore stomach you laughed so much. And that’s why you keep going.” So what’s green and growing at the bottom of the garden?