Vaudeville Visits

Healthy Humor offers a professional clowning program specifically designed to meet the needs of the often vulnerable population living in geriatric residential care facilities and elders in critical care.
Vaudeville Visits performers create iconic characters, easily recognizable from stage, screen and culture. These can include a Hollywood song and dance team, a chef, a bride, a used car salesman, etc. Performers use a skillful mix of song, dance, juggling, puppetry, storytelling techniques and improvisation to entertain, engage, and delight the residents. They inspire jokes, smiles, sing-alongs, and many happy memories.

Residents, even those with pronounced dementia, grasp that these characters are there to create FUN. By their playful invitations, the performers are often able to coax participation out of residents who normally do not engage, or those who have not responded to other activities and interventions. We create interactive, tailored, elder-initiated entertainment that fosters empowerment.
Vaudeville Visits currently serves Saint Barnabas Medical Center, where we make joyous connections with frail elders and those with cognitive challenges admitted to the inpatient units. Other programs worldwide provide healthcare clowning to elders in residential care. Our Saint Barnabas program is the first of its kind for those in critical care.

Special Events

Healthy Humor can enhance any special occasion. We have developed educational programming and corporate training sessions, provided entertainment for red Carpet events as well as meetings and celebrations, and served as keynotes speakers at conferences.Contact us today to explore how we can bring our unique brand of play to your event!

Connections Workshops

Healthy Humor offers workshops for healthcare providers, educators, administrators and technical staff in many professions. We inspire professionals in all fields to bring their own humanity and a sense of joy and play into their work, thereby improving communication, teamwork, and commitment and preventing burnout.

The skills of a successful healthcare clown include the ability to rapidly read audiences and assess environments, to respond to subtle physical and emotional cues, to create genuine contact, to pay attention, to give patients, family and staff the feeling that they “ belong” to them — in short, to be totally present. These skills translate directly to many professions.

Our goal is not to turn participants into clowns; we will not dress them up or teach them tricks. Rather, our goal is to impart the techniques and approaches of Healthy Humor that are applicable to both clinical and administrative professionals in their daily work.

Hole in the Wall Gang Camp

Healthy Humor continues a 30-year tradition by providing artists-in-residence who are an integral part of the programming at Hole in the Wall Gang Camp in Ashford, CT, the specialty camp founded by Paul Newman for chronically ill children. Our performers serve up joy and laughter to the HITWGC campers throughout the entire summer.