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OUR TEAM
Founded by Vivian Gladwell in 1990, Nose to Nose is a team of people
with diverse experiences in the fields of theatre, community building,
teaching, storytelling, play therapy, counselling, Special Needs
and organisational consultancy. Our influence and training ranges
from The Bataclown (France) and the Sacred Art of Clowning to Jonathan
Kay’s Theatre of Now and the Roy Hart Theatre.
We are all trained and accredited facilitators with Nose to Nose.
This means that as part of the team we are committed to inform our
practice of teaching clowning through a team process of supervision,
peer review and co-facilitation.
Through our willingness to explore positively issues of communication
and collaboration within our team, we believe we practise the central
message of the work we teach – an approach and philosophy
that sees clowning as a social playground for exploring our humanity.
This collective intelligence (as opposed to an individual one)
contributes to the creative diversity and quality of our work.
 Vivian
Gladwell
lives and works in France as a modern day Court Jester with various
businesses and teaches clowning with the Bataclown. He also teaches
English at the University of Social Sciences in Toulouse. Founding
member of Nose to Nose and Fool View, the Social Clowning group, he
regularly visits England to give clown workshops at Emerson College
and the Blackthorn Trust Medical Centre in Maidstone. His research
into the applications of clowning to teaching has taken him to Germany
at the Waldorf Pedagogik Institute in Witten Annen, a college based
on the teachings and philosophy of Rudolf Steiner.
 Terry
Harrington
began organising Nose to Nose workshops in the UK in 1994. A trained
counsellor, she works on a helpline for children and families and
facilitates non-directive play with children and young people. She
runs clown workshops for counsellors and for team building in organisation.
 Sharon
Usher
Sharon's background is in scientific and environmental research, organisational
consultancy, group facilitation and community building. She has worked
in both corporate and community contexts. She was director of the
Sutton Courtenay Abbey (a community and retreat centre) for
8 years. In addition to training with Nose to Nose she has studied
sacred clowning with Didier Danthois and toured with an improvisational
theatre company with Jonathan Kay’s Theatre of Now. Her main
interest these days is in Social Clowning - how the clown can allow
the heart fully back into organisational life.
 Paul
MacDonald
teaches drama and clowning at the Artemis School in Peredur, East
Sussex where he first trained in Creative Speech. He also runs clown
workshops for Waldorf teachers, doctors and Special Needs groups.
He is currently directing a number of clown performances.
And the new team ...
Jessica Hernandez
Born in 1981 a grown up in Luxembourg. Studied Speech and Drama at
the Goetheanum, Dornach (Switzerland) and at Artemis School of Speech
and Drama, East Grinstead (West Sussex). She is fluent in English,
Spanish, French, German, Swiss German and Luxembourgish. She lives
in England and works as an actress and drama teacher / workshop facilitator.
Her work frequently takes her to Scotland, Switzerland and Luxembourg.
She has worked with Special Needs.
 Carol
Thompson (BA B.Ed RSA Dip. Psych)
My original training was in English and Theatre Arts at the University
of Toronto and the Drama Studio in London. I worked in Education and
Theatre for some years and then qualified to be a Psychosynthesis
therapeutic counsellor and an NLP Master Practitioner. I took these
skills into business in the private and public sectors as a Communication
Skills Trainer. In recent years I have become involved in the positive
psychology movement as a Laughter Leader and now a Clowning Facilitator,
combining my interests in education, theatre and psychology.
Chris Seeley
I spent much of my childhood making art and my first degree was in
design, specialising in typography. Beginning in corporate design,
I moved (via Masters' degrees in Marketing and Responsibility and
Business Practice), to business consultancy, action research and sustainability.
I then came to weave arts-based practice back into the mainstream
of my work. My involvement with sustainability issues brought to the
fore the need for our species, to come to know the world in many different
ways - including "presentational knowing" or arts-based
practice. Increasingly, I have worked in the visual arts, improvisation,
storytelling, clowning and forum theatre (in Sri Lanka) in my educational,
business and development work. I am a Visiting Fellow at the Centre
for Action Research in Professional Practice, and my consultancy work
is deeply informed by and concerned with action research processes.
This interweaving of my concerns was articulated in my unconventional
2006 PhD - "Wild Margins: Playing at work and life" which
explores the overlapping relationship between purposeful work and
the arts, and arts-based practice (especially clowning) which holds
intentions around sustainability issues.
Robert McNeer
Born in the United States in 1957, McNeer has worked as an actor and
theatrical educator in the USA and in Europe since 1977.
With a Bachelor’s degree in the “Interpretation of Literature”
from Northwestern University, he also studied at the Mimenschule Ilg
in Zurich and with Tadashi Suzuki in Togamura, Japan.
He regularly conducts seminars for actors and educators in Germany,
and acting courses in Puglia, southern Italy. In 13 years of acting
work with Teatro Kismet in Bari, Italy, he has also taught theatre
in schools, prisons and psychiatric wards. He has worked as an actor
in front of children and adults in Asia and the Middle East as well
as throughout Europe.
In 1999, together with his wife Pia Wachter, he founded La Luna nel
Pozzo (The Moon in the Well), a cultural centre in the countryside
near Ostuni (Brindisi province), in southern Italy, where, aside from
his work as director and actor, he continues his theatrical research
with non-professional actors (young people, teachers, social workers,
differently-abled), both in theatrical and non-theatrical settings,
such as the countryside, town squares and historical neighborhoods,
archeological sites. ... read more.
 Dr
Andy Pride (GP)
Andy is a practicing GP. He has found that clowning maintained his
sanity whilst working within the sometime mad world of public services.
He has studied clowning with Vivian Gladwell (Nose to Nose) Didier
Danthois (Fool at Heart) Patch Adams (Gesundheit!) Angela De Castro
(Why Not Institute of Contemporary Clowning) and others.
He has experience of clowning in theatre, street, social and institutional
settings and more recently lead workshops using clowning to enhance
communication skills and personal awareness for groups such as GP’s
and Palliative care staff.
Catherine Bryden (Canada / UK)
Has been teaching at the Rudolf-Steiner School in Gröbenzell,
Munich, Germany since 2001. In Canada, she studied Developmental Psychology,
Theater, Teaching English as a Second Language (TESL), and Translation.
She has taught ESL in Canada, Taiwan, Singapore and Germany, where
she founded and directed children’s summer language camps in
French and English. In the last 5 years, she has been conducting workshops
for teachers and student-teachers in communication, improvisation
and clowning in Stuttgart and the Witten Annen Seminar for Waldorf
teachers, as well as at her school in Munich. She has been coordinating
various UNESCO projects, in conjunction with students, parents, and
colleagues. For the last two years, she has been training and practicing
conflict and mediation. She speaks English, French, and German.
 Piotr
Bujak
Piotr works in Poland. No biog available as yet.
 ...
and in memory of Jackie Moore
who died 31 July 2006
read more ...
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