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Team

Our team in North America

As facilitators, we believe we stay true to the spirit of clowning when we flow with the creative process of each person, when we nurture its emotional expression and the emergence of the imagination and when we facilitate and free actors to find their own clown, unique and grounded in their relationship to the audience. It is our belief that by focusing on the individual we are, in fact, going straight to the heart of clowning which is the search for authenticity both in the social or personal dimensions of our lives.

Vivian Gladwell

FOUNDER OF NOSE TO NOSE (1988)

Vivian is the founder and director of Nose to Nose and has given hundreds of workshops around the world. He lives both in the UK and France where he started clowning in 1978. He speaks French and English fluently.

Vivian began teaching in 1988 as part of the Lifeways Festival at Emerson College – UK. He trained as a facilitator with the Bataclown in 1990 and joined their team in 1991 also working as a modern day Court Jester (Clownanalyst).

He created Nose to Nose UK in 1990, Nose to Nose of North America in 2006, Nose to Nose Germany in 2008, NTN Italy in 2016 and Fool View, the Social Clowning group and has trained facilitators in the UK, the USA, Germany and Italy – view history.
He continues his role as ambassador for the work by researching the applications of clowning in the context of teacher training, medicine, conflict management, ecology and intercultural work in many countries (South Africa, USA, Senegal, Vietnam, India, Malaysia, Italy, Germany, Norway…)

He holds clowning as a social playground for exploring our humanity.

Laura Geilen

Photo on 5-28-15 at 2.20 PM #2Laura Geilen lives in Hillsdale, New York, and works with her special friends in Camphill Village Copake. She is a member of Nose To Nose of North America under the guidance of Vivian Gladwell, founder of Nose To Nose of the UK. She collaborates with the acclaimed Walking the Dog Theater (www.wtdtheater.org), with Kevin and Erin Maile O’Keefe of CircusYoga (www.circusyoga.com), and with Berkcirque (www.berkcirque.com). She teaches movement and circus arts, Spacial Dynamics® and clowning to adults, kids and special needs populations throughout the Berkshire-Taconic region. She enjoys bringing people a renewed experience of their creativity, authenticity and aliveness through the transformative power of play.

To read her article on clowning and special needs click here: http://naclownworkshops.blogspot.com/2012/02/clowning-special-needs-and-clowning-as.html

Angie Foster

Angie FosterAngie Foster is a Clowning Facilitator, Actress, Director, and teacher.  She trained with Vivian Gladwell and is on the team of Nose to Nose of North America.  She has facilitated clowning workshops in the Philadelphia area and at the Rudolf Steiner College in Sacramento, California as well as Threefold Education Center in Spring Valley, New York and elsewhere in the country.  She teaches co-workers regularly at Kimberton Hills, Beaver Run, and Soltane communities.

She trained first as a classical actress at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts.  She has performed on Broadway in two productions as well as off-Broadway.  She did several years of experimental theater with Andre Gregory, as well as regional theaters around the country.  Other trainings include Spacial Dynamics with Jaimen Macmillan and Gestalt Training with Mariah Gladis.  She has been teaching Drama and directing plays at Kimberton Waldorf School for 20 years.  This form of clowning combines her passion for improvisation and theatre, her quest for what it is to be human, and discovering freedom through play.

Kristin Spaeth Crowley

KristinKristin did not come to clowning by choice, but was forced into it by wiser others who knew where she belonged. Her work as a clown and facilitator led to the fumbling discovery and recovery of a language she knows inwardly, loves, and could have lost. Her
specialities include weeping, falling in love, making mischief, and the invisible. She is grateful for the inspiration and example of those brilliant, talented generous people she has been privileged to work with or been touched by – artists, musicians, athletes, educators, poets, seekers, thinkers, healers, and other “ordinary” fearful and courageous spirits willing to risk and dare. She is amazed and astonished by her family, her parents and siblings, her children, and those she has claimed unjustly as her own, by those braver than she, facing the ordinary challenges connected with being alive, and by forgiveness. She is interested in presences and possibilities. She is informed by life and living, by beauty, ugliness, music, laughter, poetry, nature, stillness, cruelty, and compassion, by brave souls and tender hearts by the struggle to realize the impulse that initiated a wish to be, and by the work she has to do. The mistakes she makes: the limitations she must overcome, the struggles she faces in being and becoming, the gifts she has been given, and her sense of wonder, reverence, and gratitude inform and guide her in her work with others. She works with individuals, companies, institutions, agencies, and organizations. She still struggles and falls down.

Blondine Maurice

unnamedSince 1969 the film of Jean Louis Barrault, Les enfants du Paradis, the theme of the Fool has refused to leave her heart. 1999 onwards: various encounters with different streams of seeking the Fool in You, but mostly and truly embracing the approach of Vivian Gladwell in Nose to Nose Europe& NA. She is now, after the Facilitator Training a proud member of the first Nose To Nose Inner Clown Team of NA.
Blondine has raised 7 children, has 11 grand children and been a Waldorf Early Childhood teacher since 1980. These experiences granted her many opportunities to find the humor in everyday life.
Assisting for 7 years in various transformative workshops and Body Mind Therapy training has helped Blondine to develop ease in holding space, listening and creating a safe environment for emerging clowns. Meanwhile she creates a lifetime journey towards her business: The Heart Nose and the healing power of laughter.
Her quest …encountering in innocence & wonder, favorite quote of the day: “You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation” Plato

and in loving memory of Ann Willcutt

ann.1Ann clowned with Avner Eisenberg, Julie Goell, Keith Johnstone, Karen Montanero, Ruth Zaporah, and Vivian Gladwell.
She had 33 years of teaching in Waldorf and public schools including teaching Biography to adults and mentoring teachers. She held an MA in Speech and Theatre from Indiana University. March 6, 1937 – May 6, 2014

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