Laughter League

Tiffany Riley has performed and created theatre and circus around the globe for the past twenty-five years. She was the first female clown featured with Big Apple Circus. Riley earned a BFA in Acting from New York University and toured the country with Henson’s Muppets before discovering physical comedy with the LA Circus. While parenting two children and clowning full-time, Tiffany earned a Master's Degree in Humanities from Southern Methodist University. In partnership with husband and partner, Dick Monday, she co-founded the Laughter League, a non-profit organization whose mission is to uplift the lives of the families they serve through the transformational power of laughter. Laughter League currently manages healthcare clown programs in pediatric facilities across the United States. Tiffany is co-founder of the North American Federation of Healthcare Clowning Organizations. In 2018, she wrote and published her first book, Beyond the Red Nose: The Serious Business of Healthcare Clowning.

Laughter League is committed to uplifting lives through the use of humor. We firmly believe that when children and families can find their way to laughter and joy, then hope is alive. Whether they are in the midst of cancer treatment on the inpatient unit at Boston Children’s Hospital or sitting hungry in an assembly program at their school, we bring that hope to them in the form of engaging, funny and educational interactions. We are proposing a project that combines our healthcare clown work with our live performance in order to bring our gifts into underserved neighborhoods that have little access to the arts. Through comedy, we not only get them laughing, we are also able to help build their self-esteem by teaching them circus skills as part of our interactive performances. By engaging with children through laughter, we can help them have a better quality of life.

We strive to prove that laughter truly is the best medicine. We work with doctors, nurses, psychologists and child life specialists to find ways to help heal the emotional side of the child while they heal the physical. Laughter has been proven to help relax muscles, reduce stress hormones, build your immune system, reduce pain, lower blood pressure, help heart and lungs and provide healing moments of joy and delight. Our goal as an organization is to reach as many children in the United States as we can with the transformational power of laughter. We have programs in major pediatric hospitals in Texas, Massachussetts, California and Rhode Island. We impact over 100,000 children annually at the hospital, and thousands more at summer camps for kids with chronic health issues. We facilitate team-building workshops using circus arts to the same children. And finally, we teach math and science through interactive performances in public schools. Children are positively impacted by their encounters with Laughter League, and they are left with a hopeful and uplifted outlook on life.

Circo Metropolis Pop-Up is a one-day event that can be reproduced in multiple neighborhoods. The goal is to excite kids about the magic of circus skills by conducting a free morning workshop that engages kids in learning juggling, balancing, plate spinning and physical comedy. Kids can find success quickly with simple juggling tricks and improvisation games that boost self-esteem, encourage team-building and even help them understand science! After the workshop, families will be served box lunch while the performers prepare for the show.  The day culminates with a professional performance by the Laughter League Team, including displays of all the skills they learned about in the morning…and more! Circus is an art form that crosses all age groups and demographics and the Circo Metropolis Pop-Up brings families together for a day of FREE fun right in their neighborhood!

This project is intended to be presented to the underserved communities in the metropolitan areas where we currently have Laughter League clown programs: Boston, Providence, Dallas, Ft. Worth and Los Angeles. We are seeking to bring this engaging and interactive event to neighborhoods where poverty is high and the demographic often reflects BIPOC communities. Beyond the program itself, we have pledged to do all we can to identify and amplify potential in the young people we encounter in our workshop. The arts are often overlooked as an important component of helping those less fortunate, we instead think mostly of how to help them get the basic needs such as food. I firmly believe that being introduced to the arts and getting a chance to experience the arts first hand can make a huge impact on the mental health of all people, but especially those who are otherwise excluded from the magic of theater, music and circus.

We are committed to elevating opportunities for all people, especially those who are traditionally left behind, by bringing world-class artistry to them and helping them unlock their own creativity. The tools we use, engaging kids with improvisation and circus skills and teaching how to connect with people through simply listening and making eye contact, are all incredibly fun. They are so fun that kids often do not realize they are learning, and before long they have learned a new skill without even realizing it. The best part is that the learning sticks with them longer, because they had fun!

Dick Monday, Jay Stewart and me, have had a long history of producing shows of varying sizes and in multiple locations. We initially conducted a similar project to what we are proposing that was called the L. A. Circus Arts Caravan project in Los Angeles. This project was funded by the City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department, producing six one-day events each year in various underserved neighborhoods throughout the city. This was during the Rodney King era, and the program ended when we moved to New York City to work with the Big Apple Circus. Over the past twenty years, we have focused on growing the field of healthcare clowning and on creating impactful school programming, but have decided this is the perfect time to pursue the Circo Metropolis Pop-Up Show.  Reaching underserved communities and finding ways to dissipate general unrest in the world surrounding all of our differences is the most powerful way we can use our gifts at this time. Clowns and circus have always been an inclusive performance genre, with multiple generations and cultures often represented on a single show. With this project, we can uplift young people and help them build confidence for life.

I have been a professional clown for over twenty years, and I have found that working with health compromised children and children living in underserved communities has been tremendously impactful. The connections that we make with them from our unique position as ‘clowns’ is very special. One example of this was when I was with the Big Apple Circus on 9/11. Following that tragedy, we played Lincoln Center for four months. During intermission, I would say hello to people in the audience. Children immediately asked me if I had heard about the buildings that fell. I listened intently every single time, because it helped them feel empowered in that moment. This is how we serve children, we create an alliance with them through silliness and then allow them to be in charge of the interaction.  That rarely happens to children – especially in times of great stress and tragedy. Since then, working with children and families in this way has been my greatest passion and I have pledged to do all I can to elevate our work so that people really understand the power of clowns and what we can do to uplift lives.

In 2017, I found myself in a position to really make an impact in the field of healthcare clowning. I earned a Master of Liberal Studies Degree with an emphasis on Humanities at Southern Methodist University, and shortly afterward I was approached by Boston Children’s Hospital to take over the management of their full-time clown program. During 2017, with our non-profit organization Laughter League, my partner and I became leaders of the largest professional healthcare clowning organization in the United States. In the past three years we have also launched and managed programs at Cook Children’s Medical Center in Ft. Worth, Hasbro Children’s Hospital in Providence, Parkland Hospital and Texas Scottish Rite Hospital in Dallas and UCLA Mattel Children’s Hospital in Los Angeles. We have produced hundreds of school shows across Texas through the Texas Commission for the Arts as well as produced a tented circus and International Children’s Festival in Dallas in 2019. The Circo Metropolis Pop-Up Show will be making its debut virtually in August 2020 with a live version scheduled to begin in October, thanks to several small grants we have received. This project is based on grassroots promotion, and due to our localized hospital programs, I believe we have the talent and passion to help communities come together to celebrate a highly personalized experience just for their community. I have a proven track record for producing events that bring together people from many backgrounds to present wonderful events that are meaningful and well received.

In 2018, we premiered our tent show, Petite Palace, on the banks of White Rock Lake in Dallas, TX. The show was a hit! Word was getting around that this was a must-see show. Tuesday of the second week, it started raining and did not stop. At Friday’s show, performers were pushing water off the tent with broomsticks when they weren’t on stage and had to be carried to the stage so their feet would be dry for their act. Saturday morning, the rain finally slowed and we were relieved, until the water in the reservoir began rising. It rose and rose until the stage was covered with water and ducks were swimming through the tent. We had to get the tent out of the water or it would be ruined. We gathered the cast,  and along with about ten neighborhood volunteers, we tore down the tent, dragged it out of the lake, and set it up again on higher ground. We missed a whole week of shows, but the community we built in the process made it all worthwhile. One of our performers said it was the time of his life. Imagine that. That’s the magic of circus.

The week of March 13, 2020, we performed nineteen shows in schools libraries and senior living centers, conducted twelve clown rounds in five hospitals and were preparing for a full summer of shows and camps. When Covid19 abruptly brought this work to a halt, I had to do some quick thinking to stay alive as an organization. I realize that we were not alone in this, but with no school and no access to the hospital, we were faced with a choice – go virtual or go home. I spent the next few weeks creating and piloting a virtual program for our hospital clients called “Nose to Nose Visits”. With this invention, we were able to get back into our hospitals – virtually. This pivot not only proved that we have the flexibility to meet the changing needs of our clients, it also introduced a new way of working that will likely remain part of what we do for years to come. I think my drive and tenacity as a leader have supported my crazy ideas and shown our team that our organization will do all in our power to keep delivering our magical work to children and families.

We currently served approximately 100,000 children and families each year. In 2021, our goal is to increase that number too 125,000 by expanding to new hospitals and by introducing this new project, Circo Metropolis Pop-Up Show to multiple communities in several market areas. This growth will depend on adequate funding, although as we delve more into the virtual world, we are able to reach more people than before.

My passion is to see the work of healthcare clowning not only become an accepted profession in the United States, but also to become an expected service at pediatric facilities and facilities for seniors living with dementia.This is a lofty goal for a profession that has only existed in this incarnation since Dr. Patch Adam brought his clown skills into his work as a doctor thirty years ago. He did this because of his firm belief in the importance of humor on the healing process. Also, we have to work past the negative connotation of the word ‘clown’ and build a new understanding of the impactful work we do.

To that end, I formed the North American Federation of Healthcare Clowning Organizations and cultivated the founding members who all met a specific code of ethics that we created based on a similar organization based in Europe. I believe these organizations have put their trust in me because they believe in my leadership ability and know that I will do all I can to see this through. Since beginning the development of NAFHCO, I have helped facilitate three annual development conferences for these groups that have helped elevate awareness of our work and helped us to grow as an organization. Finally, I wrote and published a book on this subject, Beyond the Red Nose, in hopes of once again raising awareness. It is one of the first books ever published on the subject of healthcare clowning.

I prefer to think of them as hurdles rather than barriers. I believe there is nothing we cannot achieve once we put our hearts and minds to it. Of course, there will be funding challenges, and Covid challenges for face to face gatherings, but beyond that I see only opportunities. We as artists have every chance to do some heavy lifting in the service of bringing cultures together. The time is now.