“We bring colour into the black and white of the hospital room”
WHEN CLINICLOWNS TURN TEARS INTO LAUGHTER
Author: NICO VAN DEN ABEELE (OPENDOEK, Antwerp, Belgium)
Date of publication: 08/09/2026
A hospital stay is often a real ordeal for young patients and their parents: sick children don’t understand what is happening to them and are often sad or angry. Yet even in the hospital there are moments when they can briefly be completely childlike again. They owe that magic to the Cliniclowns.
A child who just wants to play freely ends up in a hospital ward where everything is serious. The contrast could not be greater. Didier Vander Perre (50) and Niki De Sitter (49) see that every day. They have been a duo with the Cliniclowns since 2017. “We notice that contrast, especially with new patients,” Niki explains. “When parents have just received very bad news and suddenly a clown walks into the room, you can definitely speak of a kind of shock effect.”
The work of the Cliniclowns is truly invaluable. Fourteen‑year‑old Lies Van den Abeele knows that better than anyone. When she was eleven, she was suddenly diagnosed with diabetes. Completely unexpected and totally unprepared, she had to go to the hospital. There it turned out she was also infected with the coronavirus. “The clowns weren’t even allowed to enter my room,” Lies says. “They stood at the little window in the door, making gestures.” Lies’s mother still remembers that the visit from the Cliniclowns was the only moment that week when her daughter was able to laugh.
In a hospital environment, children are always viewed in the same way: as patients who were once healthy and now have an illness. Looking ahead to treatment often becomes limiting for them too, because it focuses on what they will no longer be able or allowed to do, or what they will suddenly have to do. “For the clown, only the now matters,” Didier continues. “He takes into the situation and the energy of the room and adapts his play to it, like a kind of echolocation. Our work happens entirely in the moment. Without a past. Without a future. Because what happens before we enter or after we leave the room, we do not know.”
Square‑root carrots
“We once visited a girl who had a whole collection of toy lemurs,” Didier continues. “So, we started playing with them. We told her how cool it would be to smuggle monkeys into a hospital. She thought that was hilarious. That is how connection begins.”
Lies felt that same connection when she had to stay in the hospital for a full week for the second time. She was working on her maths homework when the Cliniclowns entered the room. During the conversation it became clear that she liked carrots. The clowns picked up on that and concluded that Lies must be a kind of square root carrot eating rabbit.
Niki De Sitter
“We have the most grateful audience there is!”
“We really do have the most grateful audience you can imagine,” clown Niki laughs. “We do not always remember everything we have said or played in a room. Apparently, we once told a child about a chocolate bar that could turn invisible. When we returned five weeks later, that same young patient told us he still had the chocolate, but of course we could not see it. That is wonderful.”
For parents too, a visit from the clowns in their child’s hospital room is a moment to forget the illness for a while. Juul Faes (9) was in the hospital twice and each time the Cliniclowns came by. The first time he was still very young, so he does not remember much, but for his parents it remains a beautiful memory. When he was back in the hospital last year, Juul was happy to see a clown. “Spending the whole day alone with Dad in the room gets boring quickly. When a clown comes in and does something funny, that is really nice.”
Taking back control
Humour in a sensitive context like a hospital is not always straightforward. Not everyone connects with the message of the Cliniclowns. “And that is completely fine,” Niki says. “A child can also say: No, not now. Patients should absolutely have that control.”
Liv Peeters (10) also found that important when she received a visit from a Cliniclown during a hospital stay. “On the first day of my admission a clown came to visit. I was sad and tired, and I did not really feel like it. But when the clown asked if he should leave, I said he could stay. Then he walked out of the room and came back in again while running. That was super funny. He also made silly faces and that made me laugh again.”
Lies also smiles broadly when she thinks back to the clown’s visit. “While he was talking, one of the clowns leaned against the sliding door of the bathroom the whole time. Because of that, it slowly slid open until the clown suddenly fell onto the floor in the middle of the conversation. He needed his colleague’s help to get back up. That was really funny.”
The brush and the antidote
“The clown has always been a kind of counterforce to everything that society imposes as fixed norms and values,” Didier says. “The routine of a hospital stay is also something we like to break. In a hospital room, everything is often serious and sad. Parents are sad, doctors do things you do not understand, people walk in and out. It is exactly because of that routine that children see hospitals as gloomy, boring or even frightening places. Our visit is like a multicoloured brush that brings colour to the black and white film of hospital routine.”
Didier Vander Perre
“Putting a smile on a child’s face in a hospital bed makes my day.”
Niki agrees wholeheartedly. “Even more so, breaking routines is part of what it means to be a Cliniclown. In the theatre you sometimes perform the same show many times, but in the hospital no situation is ever the same. We keep discovering new and different things. During the corona lockdown, when we were not allowed to enter the hospital, Didier and I each played from behind a webcam with the patient in the hospital. I could step away from the screen for a moment and say: I am gone. Those are situations that are impossible in a hospital room and suddenly become possible.”
“Essentially we try to be the antidote,” Didier concludes. “The light in the darkness. If we can put a smile on a child’s face in their hospital bed, then our day is made. When you feel that the energy left behind in a room is lighter than when you entered. That is what makes our job so beautiful.”