Military veterans find joy and healing through clowning
It’s 2015, and Bruce Reges is standing in an orphanage in Guatemala, dressed like a clown.
At a towering 6 feet, 5 inches tall, he’s a sight to behold, but he’s not feeling especially funny. Despite the red nose and the puppet in his hand, his mind is perpetually filled with memories of Iraq, where he saw an endless stream of death and destruction while serving as a first sergeant in the U.S. Army in 2006-08.
“Can I play with that, too?”
His attention snaps back to the present, where an adorable girl with a shy, toothy grin is pointing at his puppet, a clown marionette. Reges, who had been trained as a soldier to act hard, softens. As he hands the puppet to the child, named Wendy, he feels seen. The act of clowning, he will learn, has therapeutic powers.
For Reges and for other military veterans in the Rotary Club of Big Rapids in Michigan, clowning is healing some of the invisible wounds of war.
The Michigan Warrior Clowns, seen here climbing into a large pair of underwear, perform at veterans homes, street fairs, and car shows.
Image credit: Darren Iozia
“What happens when you clown is you add good memories to the really hard ones,” Reges says, reflecting on all he’s learned through clowning since that day in 2015. “It gives you a weapon to fight against the hard things.”
Since ancient times, clowns have used physical humor to make us laugh, or think, or connect. They’re the mimes of ancient Rome, the court jesters of medieval England, the sacred shaman clowns of the Sioux Nation.
As a form of therapy, clowning is nothing new, but it is niche. “Clowning is not for everyone,” says John Bair, a Rotary member in suburban Chicago and a clinical psychologist who worked with veterans at the Captain James A. Lovell Federal Health Care Center for 30 years. “Some people are afraid of clowns.”
Therapeutic clowning grew out of the practice of psychodrama, which was developed in the early- to mid-20th century by psychiatrist Jacob Levy Moreno, who encouraged patients to act out their problems. As a type of expressive therapy — which also includes art, music, and movement therapies — clowning encourages people to explore their emotions. “For people who are kind of stuck, it puts them in the present,” says Bair. “You can’t clown without taking on a new persona.”
For some veterans, returning home from war can bring feelings of alienation and numbness. They may be diagnosed with mental health conditions such as depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, or suicidal ideation. Clowning isn’t a cure, but Bair says that it can provide a sense of safety along with a much-needed jump-start.
Reges returned from Iraq in 2008 with a traumatic brain injury that changed his personality. He was haunted by the deaths of 143 soldiers stationed at his base over the course of his 15-month deployment. He had no job. In time, his wife wanted a divorce. He stopped paying his mortgage and lost his home. “I didn’t want to do anything anymore,” he says. “All I wanted to do was be away from people.”
Theatrics had long been a part of Reges’ life. His mom was a puppeteer, and when he was in high school, Reges had a part-time job playing a clown on a local Bozo’s Big Top television show.
Decades later in Iraq, the Army reservist was assigned to civil affairs with duties that included helping rebuild schools. He quickly recognized that Iraqi children were terrified of U.S. soldiers in their full body armor. So he asked his mom to send over some puppets. The kids loved them, and so did Reges and his fellow troops. He even started a nonprofit called Peace Through Puppets.
But back at home, he was suffering. He desperately needed some levity, and that’s when clowning found him again.
Art as medicine
Clowning is a subset of expressive therapy, in which individuals use the arts to express and process emotions and experiences. Other types of expressive therapy include:
- Music therapy
- Art therapy
- Dance and movement therapy
- Drama therapy
Around 2015, Hunter “Patch” Adams, the clown-doctor famously portrayed by Robin Williams in the 1998 movie about his life using humor to heal, wanted to send a group of veterans with PTSD and other conditions to Guatemala for a week and teach them to clown.
Clinical psychologist Mark Kane, who had been counseling veterans for nearly 20 years at the Grand Rapids Vet Center in Michigan, was intrigued. He’d often used out-of-the-box approaches in his practice, including drum circles and equine therapy. Kane’s mother had been a clown and used humor and clowning to build bridges, including to address racial tension over school integration in the 1960s.
Kane enlisted a group of veterans who had struggled with their mental health to fly to Guatemala with Adams. Reges was among them. During visits to orphanages and hospitals, Kane watched a group of embattled individuals dress up in wigs and act like children again. They’re going to these developing countries not with their M16s but with their red noses, he says.
Science supports the idea that clowning benefits not just audiences but performers: Their brains generate feel-good hormones such as oxytocin and dopamine, says Bair. For some of the veterans, clowning in Guatemala was the first time they’d had fun in years. “When they put on the hair, the mask, the nose, and they started clowning, they told me, ‘I could come out of myself,’” says Bair.
From left: Veteran Ken Vaughan and Rotary members Tara Braun, Mark Kane, Russ Nehmer, and Bruce Reges clown around in September at a park in Big Rapids, Michigan. Science supports the idea that clowning benefits not just audiences but performers.
Image credit: Darren Iozia
Kane eventually retired from counseling but continued clowning with the group. He returned to Guatemala for a second time. As Marcos the Clown, he teamed up with veterans and launched a group called Michigan Warrior Clowns, which performs at veterans homes, parades, marches, street fairs, and car shows. They’ve also done clown weddings and even a clown funeral.
Not all of the Warrior Clown members are veterans. Kate McGlynn, whose clown name is Katy Bee, launched a clowning business when she was struggling with PTSD from domestic abuse. “Clowning saved my life,” she says. When she’s performing, McGlynn says, her focus on bringing joy to others pushes her own struggles to the background. She’s seen the same effect on others, including the other Warrior Clowns, whom she calls “the silly platoon.”
The Michigan Warrior Clowns group fosters connections. Mark Kane and Clifford Kilbourne, who served as a medic in Vietnam, sit down for a meal with other members.
Image credit: Hannah Shaw
“These guys, all they have to do is stand there and smile and be. They’re in character, and they don’t have to prove anything,” she says. “They’re just sweethearts, and I know they were not sweethearts before.”
It’s clowning that connected Reges and Kane to Rotary. The trips to Guatemala became the subject of a documentary called Clownvets in 2019. That year, the Rotary Club of Big Rapids raised money to send local veterans to the Cinequest film festival in California for a screening of the documentary.
Their support meant a lot to Kane, who joined Rotary, and he encouraged Reges and the other veterans to do the same. Today, the Big Rapids club continues to support the Michigan Warrior Clowns.
For Reges, clowning and Rotary have given him pathways to connect with others. “Otherwise, we isolate. We don’t want to be around people,” he says. “And Rotary helps me get involved with the community.”
Today, the memories from Iraq haven’t gone away. He says he carries the weight of the lives lost. “They’re whispering in my ear, ‘What are you going to do with this time that you have?’”
As long as he can hand a puppet to a child, or bring joy to someone struggling, or serve his community through Rotary, he knows the answer.
This story originally appeared in the December 2025 issue of Rotary magazine.