The Pretzels Space Odyssey: Clowns in a warzone

By Igor Narovski

This is a unique record of a unique journey – of two brave clowns who travel into a warzone. The reader is transported through the magical metaphor of space travel, into the poetic and playful imagination of the clowns. They attempt to offer mutual aid and humanity to a nation (Ukraine) that is being systematically dehumanized by its oppressor (Russia). As we enter the warzone with the clowns, we see it, not as darkness and horror, but through a lens of imagination, colour, and hope.

This book speaks to trauma and the different and complex ways that we experience it. We see how human contact, facilitated by clowns, helps people to deal with this trauma and to overcome it. The reader is invited inside these experiences, living them through the clown’s playful and poetic perspective.

The Pretzels Space Odyssey gives a deep and fascinating insight into the practice of healthcare clowning, the skills, techniques, and state of being required to bring humanistic values into institutional systems that prize efficiency and order above all else. It gives insights into how healthcare clowns empower, validate, and celebrate the people they meet through play, imagination, and presence.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Jan 5, 2024
• ISBN: 9781035823123

Igor Narovski

Igor Narovski is a Clownstronaut, adventurer and poet. As artistic director of Dr Klauns, Latvia, he has over 10 years’ experience of clowning in healthcare environments, opening the portal to the imagination, story and play for children, parents and staff in hospital. His background in psychology gives him a unique perspective into both the world of the clown and the inner world of the people they meet and the trauma they face. As a published poet, his writing acts as a self-enquiry in verses, offering a tantalising glimpse to our non-perishable, true self.

Book preview

About the Author

Igor Narovski is a Clownstronaut, adventurer and poet. As artistic director of Dr Klauns, Latvia, he has over 10 years’ experience of clowning in healthcare environments, opening the portal to the imagination, story and play for children, parents and staff in hospital. His background in psychology gives him a unique perspective into both the world of the clown and the inner world of the people they meet and the trauma they face. As a published poet, his writing acts as a self-enquiry in verses, offering a tantalising glimpse to our non-perishable, true self.

Dedication

To Suzie Ferguson

Copyright Information ©

Igor Narovski 2024

The right of Igor Narovski to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781035823116 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781035823123 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.co.uk

First Published 2024

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd®

1 Canada Square

Canary Wharf

London

E14 5AA

Preface

"Two clowns I know have begun to visit inside Ukraine. There are different words to give a title to what such clowns do to provide humanitarian service in the face of despair. In the midst of human despair and suffering is a space called hope. Chaplin and Marceau were the particular clowns who most stood up for the downtrodden. We in the clown profession all follow their gigantic, gentle, silent, invisible footprints in our creative conscious.

Chaplin was born into the horror of Dickensian Victorian England. Marceau was a survivor of the Holocaust who began his life’s mission for humanity while still a teenager. Chaplin and Marceau’s body of creative works is simply about humanity’s frailty and fallibility. Igor and Suzie stepped over the border literally and metaphorically with a wing each from Chaplin and Marceau. Suzie and Igor are like the nouveau circus act whereby one acrobat in straps flies around the ring holding or being held by their partner. Like Hansel and Gretel… they stepped into the breach and met individuals.

– Ira Seidenstein

The Beginning

On 24 February 2022, Russia attacked Ukraine. A war began.

At this moment, I was in the Indian town of Tiruvannamalai. On 28 February, I was contacted by Irēna Goluba.

We really need healthcare clowns, she wrote, to distract kids in basements and the subway. Online. Would you be able to help?

Irēna gave me the contact info of Tara Konrad, the coordinator of psychological crisis aid. Through her, I met Evgeniya Arakelyan, who oversaw this online session. We started collaborating.

***

The Zoom session consisted of five blocks.

The first block was introductions and grounding—‘where are you?’, ‘do you have food and water?’, ‘are you safe?’, ‘what did you do today?’.

The second, breath and bodywork.

The third one: imagination work.

Fourth: art-therapy—drawing, collage, modelling…

And the last one, number five: guiding the child into a resourceful state—songs, reading fairy tales…

If someone isn’t looking at the camera, Evgeniya explained in our briefing fifteen minutes before the session started, just address the child by their name. You can see the names on Zoom. Some prefer to listen without turning on their camera. Don’t let that confuse you. We just launched this support group, it’s still just 10-12 kids, but it will grow and go on for years. The children will need psychological support long after Ukraine wins.

Long after Ukraine wins, she said calmly, as if it were commonplace, like ‘good beats evil’ or ‘the Earth revolves around the sun’. I could easily picture these words starting a phone call to one’s mother in Mariupol and ending a goodnight tale for kids in a basement. The entirety of Ukrainian people was breathing the air of these words.

I was ready. The only thing left was the sacred act, the sacramental rite—putting on the red nose.

***

The virtual space of Zoom started ringing with connection signals like doorbells. Children appeared in the meeting windows, with their rooms showing behind their backs: some with fully blinded windows, some windowless altogether; some of them were alone, while others participated with a sister or neighbour by their side. Apart from the children, there were two psychologists in the Zoom meeting. Ivita Goldberga-Miljone and I sat in with our cameras off so as not to ruin the surprise.

Introductions began. It was the turn of a woman holding a large black cat. In a fluffy saccharine pink voice pouring like sugar candy, the woman introduced herself and started talking about her day. She spoke using the pronoun ‘we’—‘Kuzya and I went there’, ‘Kuzya and I did that’, ‘Kuzya and I adore this’. As if in protest, the cat tried escaping her arms, but she kept rigorously returning Kuzya to her lap. It seemed as if Kuzya the Cat was the guardian of her frail spiritual balance; if he left, so would the balance, and the woman was like a tightrope dancer walking over an abyss. This ‘Kuzya and I’ served as a sort of Holy Communion, an attempt to adopt the cat’s metaphysical calm and all of his nine lives. The woman showed off Kuzya on camera and waved at us with his furry paw. She hid behind him like a totem, sought protection in him, the kind which we seek with higher powers in times of extreme uncertainty.

We were asked to take the lead in the second block dedicated to breath and bodywork.

I turned on my microphone and started humming. Humming like a person who is in a brilliant mood and is certain nobody is listening. Once I turned on the camera (as if it started working suddenly on its own), a dance emerged from the song. Silly movements of the body without any practical meaning, summoned only for their own sake, just because I could do this and—look!—this too, were a celebration of owning my body, an explosion of life in a nocturnal sky of nonexistence. I heard laughter. And froze: Who’s there? A new wave of laughter, and I looked at the monitor. A honey-sweet laughter was pouring from the Zoom windows that looked like bees’ honeycombs. Oh God, so embarrassing to be caught doing my silly little dance.

Finding oneself ‘in the shit’ is a wonderful opening for a clown. This instantly sets the right tone, putting me in the position of the biggest fool in the room and thus elevating everyone else. The fool, like the two-faced Janus, combines two hypostases: the vulnerability of ‘I want to be like you, to be with you’, and the invincibility