“We make isolation easier”: hospital clowns quarantined in St. Petersburg broadcast live shows

- How much has the current quarantine hit the work of hospital splitters?

- With the beginning of quarantine, the number of exits we reduced to zero. Moreover, even before the COVID-19 pandemic, hospitals had quarantine for influenza, since the beginning of February we have not had any speeches. Many children sit in hospitals completely closed for the second month.

Isolation is generally the main issue that hospital clowns work with. After all, the hospital is already an initially insulating story, the children there are cut off from the world and without any quarantines. Volunteers, including us, are trying to facilitate this isolation for them. But now the situation has worsened - children are not only in this hospital isolation, but also in isolation due to quarantine. Accordingly, anxiety only increased, and we are working with it.

Now some children cannot even see their parents, because of quarantine no one can visit them at all. True, the clinics with which we work more often specialize in cancer, and there the mothers, of course, as they were with their children, remained inside the hospitals with them. But here, for example, children can no longer see their dads, they cannot go out for a walk, and in many hospitals they cannot even leave their wards now. Therefore, hospital clowns are very relevant - when we began to turn to hospitals with our new format, they literally clutched at us.

- How did you manage to organize work in the format of online broadcasts?

- Since the introduction of restrictive measures, we managed to remove the scenery necessary for the work and distribute them to the homes of our working group. Now we exhibit the scenery and work from home. This is a little difficult to do, because the home Internet sometimes does not work very well, but we are trying to somehow manage.

Speeches are now being broadcast live, this is a conference at Zoom. In the hospitals we work with, there are usually large TVs in the game room - there are children watching our broadcasts. Now several medical institutions are fully working with us. This week we will connect another Pavlovsk hospice.

- It turns out to stay afloat in such difficult conditions? Do you get any help?

“We were very lucky, because even before the outbreak, we won a presidential grant.” As soon as the story of coronavirus began, we proposed reorienting these funds specifically to work under quarantine, and we were allowed to do this.

Quarantines in hospitals - for example, because of the same flu - had happened before, so morally I was already ready for such a format, I wanted to introduce it.

- Have you experienced any difficulties in interacting with your audience after switching to online broadcasts?

- It is clear that the interaction during live broadcasts is not the same as the time of live performances. Contact with children, of course, is now a little different. It’s one thing when you talk with your mom, for example, in the kitchen, and quite another when you communicate on Skype. Of course, there is some kind of error; this cannot be avoided. But we are rebuilding to a new format, and children are also rebuilding. Maybe in about three weeks we will smooth out this error.

On the other hand, there is some kind of “new recognition”. When the first broadcasts took place, the children endlessly tried to make sure that it was really us, asked: “Is this really you? Really you? " That is, it is important for them to rely on something familiar.

We quickly realized that now we need to “go out” to our old repertoire - if all these jokes live would have seemed hackneyed to children live in the hospital, then we give them out again, and they work fine, because it’s just reliance on the “familiar” .

So far we are working with those clinics in which we have performed live, that is, the children know us. At the same time, we also have new hospices in the queue, which we also plan to connect with our project.

- How difficult was it to make the transition to a new format?

- The transition to online broadcasts is, of course, a stressful story. Plus, when you are in the hospital, there is still at least some air there - you can move from house to house, there is time for a breather. And during the online broadcast you have to keep this nerve all 45 minutes.

But now we are so much needed that this fact itself is already very inspiring. I think that soon everything will be tuned and adjusted. New formats are always difficult. I think that after the pandemic we will preserve this entire structure, it is not in vain and for a long time. We are also discussing partnerships with other organizations that can offer children in hospitals, for example, online drawing classes.

- Why do people go into this difficult profession? How do they become hospital clowns?

- Personally, my story began in 2009. I had some vague idea that I want to be a clown, but it was never realized. And then I read that there is a volunteer project with hospital clowns in Moscow. I got in touch with the guys and wanted to go to learn from them, and I was offered to launch a similar volunteer organization in St. Petersburg.

Over time, it became clear that it was time to switch to professional rails, because when you work for free three times a week, it’s wrong. We reoriented, and now all our clowns work for money under our control.

Moreover, our hospitals are free for hospitals, we pay for the work of artists from the funds that we collect with the help of fundraisers and sponsors. Fortunately, now, thanks to the grant that we have, we have not “subsided” with the outbreak of the epidemic and can continue to pay our clowns.