odrigo Morganti is a human being, a clown, healthcare clown, clown trainer and co-founder of the project by Giullari Senza Frontiere (Jesters without Borders), with whom he participated in various missions all over the globe in order to bring a little joy and laughter to people in areas shaken by crisis such as Mozambique, Yugoslavia, Bielorussia, India, Srilanka, Tanzania… Cultured Life is thrilled to share his journey.
Cultured Life: Hi Rodrigo, thank you for sharing your story as we highlight how people Package their Brilliance in various professions. Tell us a little about yourself. Where are you from?
Rodrigo: I am Italian but half Spanish (my mother is from Madrid). I have been traveling since I was in my mother’s womb.
Cultured Life: How did you discover that you could become a professional clown?
Rodrigo: In my childhood, people would say that I was a “clown”, and probably this was my natural answer to hide my shyness… but that kind of clown is very far from what “clown” means to me now. When I was 20 years old, I fell in love with juggling and I started doing street shows, and this path evolved over the years.
Cultured Life: What does a professional clown do?
Rodrigo: I am asked this question a lot. I will say, I am a professional clown trainer and healthcare clown, as, for some years, I am not performing “on a stage”. Instead, I have been training others a lot. I am also working as a hospital clown.
Going back to your question, as a clown trainer, I help people show themselves without the masks so that you don’t laugh at them but you laugh with them. As for my work with hospitals, I will say that this is just the beginning of a very long journey.
“…this goes back to what does being a clown mean for me, to witness the beauty of life.” – Rodrigo Morganti
Rodrigo in Tanzania bringing joy
Cultured Life: What are some of the steps you took to become masterful at your career path?
Rodrigo: The first step was the unconscious courage of following something I loved so much.
Then I understood that it is a never-ending process, there is always something you will learn and so I looked for teachers, schools, mentors…
I think it is also important while answering this question, to name TRUST. The trust in myself, the trust that people gave to me; which allowed me to lead my first clown doctors courses (as I started very young in Italy, and I was the first clown doctor in Italy).
As soon as the foundation I was working for started to grow, I had to teach others, and I was not ready at all… but I understood that to teach others means that you have to understand what you are doing…and that is only the beginning of a learning process.
And always speaking about trust… the trust of the people who come to my workshops. I kept studying, looking for good teachers that can help me to improve and grow, and I found very good ones!!
For me, it is important to keep curiosity alive!!
Rodrigo with Italian Refugees
Cultured Life: What inspires you every day to keep pursuing your career path?
Rodrigo: Having a network of people for exchanging, supporting, and sharing…
I will say that during the pandemic this helped me a lot. And something I feel is always important to remember, especially in this period where we have been living with a lot of fears is: to feed the beauty of life, do beautiful things, watch beautiful things, listen to beautiful things.
…and this goes back to what being a clown mean for me, to witness the beauty of life.
Caricature of Rodrigo
Cultured Life: How did you overcome self-doubt and perhaps others not supporting this career path?
Rodrigo: I think there were people around who helped me to find the strength to go on.
There is always inside me a voice of self-doubt, as there are many other voices that I have inside… but this gets stronger when I am not doing my work.
So I realized how important it is to keep the artistic world alive, and that gives me the strength to keep going.
Cultured Life: What are some of the challenges you had to overcome to become known in your field and create success?
Rodrigo: The first word that comes up for me is QUALITY, probably this is the biggest challenge, to improve more and more the quality of what I am doing and remain true.
Cultured Life: What advice do you have for others who have a desire to pursue an unconventional career?
Rodrigo: Trust in you and in the others!
Honestly, I don’t know what is a conventional career and what is not.
I think that each of us has a gift, and if you find it, go for it!!
It is already so hard to do something you love that I can not imagine doing work that you hate or that doesn’t excite you. And remember that learning is a never-ending process.
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