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Features
The Clarion | March 27, 2009
LAOGH ONTTL YOU CRY
Senior Robin Funsten participates in Patch Adams’ clowning outreach program
by Joseph Chilton
Editor in Chief
Senior Robin Funsten spent her spring
break basking in the lifestyle of a movie
star.
No, she didn’t spend a week clubbing with
celebutantes or walking the red carpet arm
in arm with a leading man. Her time was
spent visiting hospitals, nursing homes and
rehab centers with Patch Adams and his
Gesundheit! Global Outreach program.
Funsten joined a group of around 20
clowns, including Adams, for a trip to
Guatemala March 7-15. Her troop met up
with a Guatemalan clown troop, Fabrica de
Sonrises, and toured Guatemala City and
Antigua with them helping to cheer up the
poor and terminally ill there.
Most people have seen the film "Patch
Adams" and have a vague idea of what the
group does, but according to Funsten the
real Patch is a polar opposite from Robin
Wilhams’ character
While Wilhams resembles an anthropo
morphized Ewok, Adams stands a towering
6-foot-3, sporting a Sam Elliot mustache
and long locks of bluish gray hair that flow
well past his waist.
“He is way different from Robin Williams
in every way you could possibly imagine,
but he is hilarious,” Funsten said. “He is
a very politically charged, very loving
man.”
According to Funsten, Adams stressed
to all of his volunteers that they were not
going to Central America for vacation, but
rather to “spread peace and love through
fun.”
Funsten became familiar with Adams’
work a decade before his life story hit the
silver screenin 1998. Her trip this year was
her first with an organization that she had
known about and wanted to be a part of
since she was five years old.
“1 grew up knowing about Gesundheit!
and Patch Adams way before the movie be
cause my parents were hippies. We visited
the Gesundheit! Institute in West Virginia
and always got the Achoo News.”
Over the past year, Funsten began doing
m
photo courtesy Robin Funsten
Robin Funsten poses with Edwin, a boy she met while performing as a clown
in Guatemala with Patch Adams' Gezundheit! Global Outreach program during
spring break.
charitable clowning with a friend and the
two visited nursing homes in Asheville.
Funsten’s friend was already invoved
with Gusendheit!, and hearing her friend’s
stories of performing outreach services in
Cuba, Haiti and Russia served as the im
petus for Funsten’s joining the group for
this year’s trip.
There is no specific training provided by
the Institute for it's clowns. The group was
given one talk prior to the trip, in which
they were instructed to develop their own
clowning style in order to bring happiness
to people the best way they can.
“Some of the styles were strange and
inappropriate and 1 can’t really believe
they got away with it,” said Funsten, refer
ring in particular to Adams’ son Lars who
doimed a super-short tutu in order to flirt
with patients.
Funsten’s style also revolved around flirt
ing, a harmless act that she says transcends
language barriers. Funsten also carried
with her instruments for making a band
and would gather kids to play the drums,
tambourine, clapper and whistle with her
to entertain patients through song.
Another facet of Funsten’s comic ap
proach was a flower puppet that stayed
attached to her hand the entire trip.
“We changed clothes every day, so I had
a lot of clowning outfits, but I always had
the puppet,” Funsten said. “But puppets
make you weird after a while, they take
over your hand and eventually it gets out
of control.”
The Gusendheit! clowns hit two to three
locations a day, ranging from nursing
homes to rehab centers to a garbage dump
where children scrounge for salvageable
items during the day while their parents
work.
For Funsten, who now says she is suffer
ing from hug withdrawals after receiving
approximately 500 hugs a day on her trip,
the smiles of the children and patients she
visited left an indelible impression. She
plans to re-up with Gesundheit! for a trip
to Ecuador at the end of August.
“The trip showd how incredibly powerful
it can be to love somebody, even a stranger,
and how much it can change her world.”
ATTEXTIOX
smunis:
Make sure to vote for your
commencement speaker
by March 30 by e-mailing
jonesjw@brevard.edu