Something Silly Clowns is one!

Something Silly Clowns has turned one and to celebrate we are going to recap the last year

of ups and downs, good times and bad, comments that made us laugh and so much more.

We are going to go over what we were thinking at the beginning of last year as it relates to

now. We also want to make a list of things we may want to do in the coming year. We are

going to break our updates into 5 categories; Ideas from last year, We did it!!, Best

moments, Toughest problems, and Next year. Now come along with us to recap this

amazing last (and first!) year.

Let's start in November of last year. Both of us were so sad and confused about our clown

troupe dying that we thought “Well maybe we could do something.” (That something is what

we now know as Something Silly Clowns, but that's not how it's always been.) We both call

the same Church home so we thought that might not be a bad place to start. We talked

about different options and talked with the pastor of our Church and we agree to do a

Christmas performance for the kids program.

After doing the Christmas performance we got together and said ”Hey what do we want to

do now?”

Ideas from last year

We came up with a few things that we might want to do in the near or distant future. They

were just fairly random ideas. The first was to continue to do performances at our home

church. Our plan was to do a couple a year. Some of the other things we had talked about at

the beginning of the year were to do candy striping, and performances at the library, or

nursing homes. Right away we were able to rule out candy striping due to personal issues.

Some of our other options were to do performances at nursing homes, library, or daycares.

None of those things managed to happen this year but are still possibilities for a later date.

With these you don't know your audience very well so you have to be extra prepared for

everything, also these could involve a different kind of performing that we call “walk around

clowning” which we will talk about more at a later date, but we aren’t very experienced at it

yet.

Also at the beginning of the year we talked about eventually starting a blog to help new

clowns not make the same major mistakes that we made when we first started clowning,

that we later had to go back and fix. (if you are reading this right now I think that you can

guess that the blog happened)

The last 2 things on our list of possible things to work on in the year were an event with the

Church that we share a building with, and we later added that we would like to take updated

photos mainly due to large changes in our costumes.

At the beginning of the year there were a lot of things that we said we would like to do, but

of them how many did we get to, and what was not on our list that we accomplished

anyways over this last year.

We did it!!

The first major thing was that we were able to put together 3 whole performances in the last

year. As the year went on we got better at writing scripts, memorizing them, and filling the

time that we had, even when we weren't on stage. As we have gone back and watched our

videos we have personally seen major improvements in our performances over this last

year.

The next thing is (we got people!). We were able to discuss with our pastor what our vision

was for Something Silly Clowns. His suggestion to us was to get a mentor, someone who

could make sure that we were not overdoing ourselves, keeping God at the center of

everything, making sure that we kept our sanity, and just plain helping to give us feedback.

Right now Something Silly Clowns is still made up of just two clowns, but behind us we have

parents, siblings, a pastor, and now even a mentor who are all giving us feedback, and

helping us stay on track on this uphill journey.

Even though we were unable to make any of the alternate performance places on our list a

reality this year we did work with one ministry this year. They go around to parks and trailer

parks and spread the Christian message to kids in a circus theme. We are not likely to be

working with them again, but they helped us to get out of our little bubble of “in Church”

performances, and because of this experience we now have a list with our current vision

and how that aligns with what we would like to do with a future co-op.

We also managed to get a photoshoot done this year!  Our last (and definitely one of our

bigger) accomplishment of the year is WE STARTED A BLOG!!!! We have only been doing

this blog thing for a few months now but we consistently have a new blog up every 3rd

Saturday at 9am. We find it so awesome to be able to share what we have learned with

others. If you are a new clown (or a clown in general) and you are reading this please feel

free to comment down below, with your clown name and your main performance stage so

that we can get to know our audience.

Best moments

As clowns of course one of the best moments in any performance is the first laugh, but what

were some of our best moments from this whole year? Here are some of our favorites.

Just plain waiting to perform our very first performance “on our own” was such a huge

moment, (As much as we loved our troupe, and as we owe so much to it.) being able to say

that we hadn't had anyone except God, and some help from our parents, guiding us through

the process was absolutely unforgettable, and at the time, almost unbelievable. Watching

ourselves afterward was CRAZY considering we neither of us had ever really seen

ourselves perform much before, we even had to learn to watch ourselves, as we could see

where lines got dropped and so on. Watching the kids has been such a blessing to us as

well. When we were still with our old troupe we clowned for kids who, for the most part, were

used to us as clowns or at least knew our troupe, (or of it.). So stepping in for the first time

was so strange for us because the kids didn’t know us as clowns or even really know much

(if any) about Christian clowns, and it was strange for them because they had no idea what

to make of us at all when we started, but through this year we have seen their enthusiasm

grow and grow to the point that they are even asking about when the next performances will

be, somewhat regularly, and they are even inviting “Us” to their houses, and asking to come

to “Our houses”.     

There are moments from each performance that really made them shine for us, here are

some of the big ones:

The first performance of the last year and a month was the Christmas performance. This

was our first performance without a leader over us, so we had lots of thing to figure out, but

some of our favorite moments were when Cupcake asks Dizzy “How to spell Hallmark?” and

Dizzy does not know, also when we have the synchronized right or left, and “Maybe there

was gluten free feed in the manger”. This performance helped us learn how to work

together, and helped us add parts of our family tree.

The first moment when we knew that the kids were really getting the point we were trying to

get across was during our love performance when we put the food dye in the water. You can

hear all of them Ohhhhing. That was at the point where we knew that even if they were not

learning something, they were at least paying attention. One of the other things that went

really well with the God’s love performance was that the adults thought that Dizzy’s song

was very funny, and when everyone started to sing together it was truly priceless. The kids

also really enjoyed the interaction with the hearts. Also during this performance we really

started to work on honing in our own personal styles, and build our characters up to what

they are now.  

Our next performance was Patience for summer. A few of the things that we found to be

really funny in this performance were that Dizzy had some crazy math skills, and laser eyes.

The other thing that the kids really seemed to like was that the snack was missing it kept

them engaged and they really wanted to know where it was. We think that the best place

that it wasn't was the Leprechauns pot of gold (That was ad-libbed by the way, thanks to our

helper!). The big accomplishment of this performance was that we achieved nearly perfect

timing for our allotted time slot and finally got into a groove.

Our last performance of this last year was our Thankfulness performance. We feel that this

is our best performance to date. Even though we did not quite get to our goal time we had

less props which helped make everything run smooth, we got our point across, and we had

an activity/craft, and a snack to fill the extra time. We can now say that none of the kids are

scared of us and can’t wait till we come back. They also now get almost all of our jokes.

Sometimes the best moments in life just don’t fit into any specific categories and it has been

the same with this last year, so here are some of those lovely laughable and in some cases

completely random moments:

As you may remember this last summer Dizzy and Cupcake went on a super fun photoshoot

in the park, it looked like we were just running around without a care it the world having fun

right? Well… that is kind of true, we DID have a lot of fun. However although the

weatherman predicted temps around 80, it soared up to 96 with a heat index that was well

over 100! It was the hottest day of the year where we live. So as we were nearing the end of

our photo shoot, we felt like we were melting, and then a passing runner decided to prove

our point, as he was jogging by in the same heat that we were melting in he exclaimed “You

two look warm!” and then promptly went on his way, but the fact that he, even though he

was running in those temps, thought that we, who had just been walking, thought that we

looked warm has tickled us ever since.

During the last few practices I Cupcake, kept confusing the word, “Script”, for the word:

“Skit”. So as we got into our practice I kept asking if we should try to go through any given

skit or the whole performance “Skit-less”! Even as I write this today I am having the same

problem, which needless to say, has and is causing some giggles.

When we do a performance we have many different ages and ability levels. At our last

performance, Thankfulness for Thanksgiving, we were expecting some to get the turkey and

give us a 5 min lecture on everything that they are thankful for in the whole world, and

others to catch it and throw it back, but one of the littlest boys told us that he was thankful

for God and threw his hands up.  This was amazing because like the other boy his age we

expected him to catch it and then throw it back. This made both of us so happy.

One moment that made us laugh for a good 10 min, was when I, Dizzy, had written a script

way too late at night and I had written Ezsonsted. We figured out that I meant to write

Exhausted but we laughed so hard trying to find out how to say Ezsonsted.

One of our very best moments was when we were able to do the food dye skit that is in our

“Patience for summer” performance. Usually we try to think up ideas as we start to form a

performance, but in this case we and a former clown: Sunny had thought up the idea

together about two years before, and you can tell by the kids reactions that despite having

thought this up for a different audience they loved it anyways. So being able to use the idea,

and hearing the kids reactions (“Ohh!”) just filled us with so much joy.  

One moment that we did not catch right away was that during a performance Cupcake had

ad-libbed that Dizzy’s hobby is making messes and says that she should take up painting.

After having forgotten about that, Dizzy had a paint set in the Thanksgiving performance

which we had lots of fun with, and will probably come again up in the future.

One of the biggest parts of this last year has been getting to know our audience. With our

former troupe, we performed for ages roughly 2-12 not counting the adults who were also

present who we also tried to entertain, and any given time that we performed we could have

anywhere between roughly 25-50+ individuals watching us, so it was hard to tailor our skits

for anyone in particular, or really even know our audience that well. However at our current

Church we have a much smaller audience with a much smaller age range for most of the

kids, so we have been able to as we got to know our audience make sure that we had

something for everyone. Simply being able to really KNOW the kids in our audience has

been such a blessing for us, and we love to hear their feedback every time we preform.  

One of the funniest moments to watch in our performances is when one of the kids

accidentally (or not in some cases) says something that gives something away, like when

they answer our questions for us (like in the this little light of mine skit) or give something

important away, (Like when they pointed out that Cupcake forgot her bag, or that we forgot

to plug in the popcorn maker.) Although this may seem like the sort of thing that could annoy

us, we often have to hold back laughter until we get off stage when this happens.  

Toughest problems

When we first started this journey, we weren't sure what to expect, and not to say that we

thought that it would be all peaches and cream, but we ran into some problems that we

didn’t expect and some that we kind of saw coming. So here are some of the hurdles we

had to jump and how we dealt with, or are still working on dealing with them:

One of the first problems we ran into when we had just started was, we didn’t know how to

set up! We were both in a new space, and we had never had to set up any performance

space by ourselves before, so we had to figure out how to set up the room, where we would

stand to perform, and where to have the kids sit so they could see, but not be too close. It

didn’t take long for us to get the hang of setting everything up, making sure that the kids sat

behind a line that the carpet makes naturally, and making sure that we are front and center.

We just needed for the most part a little trial and error, and some spatial awareness to get

past this one.  

When we first started almost all of the kids were scared of clowns, a lot of this was because

they did not know what we were. Before this we had always clowned somewhere where

there had always been clowns so no one was scared of us. Then at our current Church we

had to figure out how to teach the kids without scaring them. One thing we did is let them

ask questions, so that they got to know us and we grew our characters. The other main

thing that helped was to not approach them. Let them approach you and then you don’t

seem as scary, and also the kids can work in their own timing. The last thing is to be

consistent, we keep coming and performing. They now ask where we will be back, and I call

that a success.  

Right before we started performing at our current church we started recording our

performances - Click here to learn more- so this was something we were going to do for

each performance but at one of our performances we forgot the tripod at home and could

not start until we had the tripod. So we now have a checklist of things we need to have for

performances.

Something that we now know that we need to add to the above list is bandaids, mainly

because both of us are a little accident prone, (Dizzy lost a nail while prepping for the last

performance, hence the sudden realization.) but also because then, if a kid needs a

bandaid, we can rush in with our “Special bandaids” and save the day.

One of the biggest things that we had to figure out of course was: what are we going to do

now? That raised many side questions, like “how do we prep a performance” (although we

had been partially prepared for that by our troupe). So here are some of the things that we

needed to figure out to get started:  

One thing that we didn't know was an issue until we went back and watched ourselves, was

that the time between skits felt quite messy. To clean it up and give us more time to look at

scripts, we added music. This was something we never thought to be an issue before this

point.

One of the problems that we still struggle with sometimes is making sure that we properly

memorize skits, I know that this seems like a given but, when we first started clowning we

had relied heavily upon ad-libbing, and with the few skits that we wrote ourselves we mainly

wrote them by the ad-libbing we had done in practice and didn’t take them that seriously

because we figured that we could always just throw a different line out there if needed. Even

now we still ad-lib in a lot of lines, (although we do rely more seriously on our scripts) also

with the schedule we stick to we usually only have about a month max of fully written

scripts, and with all of the lines in our skits that isn’t very long to work on memorizing them.

However short of 3-5ish lines we have learned that most of our lines truly aren’t crucial to

the performance. So if you struggle with learning lines, remember most of the time it is

better to drop a line or two instead of trying to prompt it messily, if you need this line and

can’t get it, try a little back and forth IE. “What do you think?” It may not be perfect, but it

works.

Another issue that we had to overcome when we started our own troupe was how do we

separate on and off stage. What we found is that a pressure curtain rod and sheet work very

well, the only problem is that we had a very small curtain for a space that was definitely

wider than the curtain, this caused a gap between the curtain and the wall. The way that we

fix this was to add 2 decorative shower curtains on either side to make a larger barrier.

After a few performances we found that a 30 min performance is more than enough

information for the kids to chew all at one time, (We break this down into 5 skits at about 5-7

minutes each.) so when we have 45 min of time with the kids we had to find other thing to fill

the time. One of the things we thought about was what do they do in a Sunday school

lesson, they have the lesson, snack, craft, verse, and song. We have the performance that

fills the lesson segment of the time. We then add some of those other things, which ones

depends on how much time we have left over.

Next year

One of the biggest things that we would like to do in the future (maybe next year, maybe

farther out) Would be to find a co-op that we could work with to be able to spread God’s

love, some joy, and some lessons, to other children, or even just other people. Another thing

that we would love to be able to do would be pair up with a local nursing home, so that we

could bring some joy, some of God’s love, and some of our lessons to the lives of those who

have seen so much already, and who are so often sadly pushed aside.  

One of the things that we came up with this year was that our costumes colors could pop

against a wintery snowy background, if the weather is not too cold, but a fall background

would also be fun. So one of the things we want to do next year is a fall or winter

photoshoot. To learn more on why we do photo shoots click here.

Two things that we want to continue into the next year is our blog and performances at our

home Church. With the blog we would love to grow our audience (we have lots of ideas and

plans for the future on the blog). We would also love to do a Q and A, so if you have any

question leave them in the comments.  On the performance side we want to do 3-4

performances with our home church. We have been working through the fruit of the Spirits

as the base of our themes and we want to continue that.

Something else that we have talked about for next year (or just sometime in the future)

would be to invite the Church that we share a building with to an event (possibly a picnic) so

that we could share some time, joy, fellowship, and lessons, with them, as well as spread

some of God’s love with them.

Finally one of the craziest things that we are looking forward to this next year is something

that a year ago when asked, we said that we only saw in our distant futures, if ever. We are

going to start training a couple of new clowns! This is unbelievable to us and we hardly feel

ready, but we can’t wait to get started.   

Thanks to all of the amazing people who have helped us, our old troupe, our pastor, our

mentor, our siblings, and parents, and the teachers who help to watch the kids and let up

preform!

I guess that the best way to end this lookback of our amazing first year would be to say;

“Hey 2017, I loved you you were amazing, and I’ll miss you. Hey 2018… I can’t wait to get

started.” Thank you God for this last year, please guide our steps, as you have done for this

last year, and please help us to yield to your wisdom.   

Something Silly Clowns

(Cupcake and Dizzy)

Two clowns trying to spread God's love to everyone