Creative aging has increasingly emphasised older adults as active participants, learners, and cultural creators rather than passive recipients of care. However, discussions of arts participation in later life are often framed primarily through measurable outcomes such as health improvement, cognitive maintenance, or social well-being. This conceptual literature review examines clowning as a possible form of creative aging, focusing on play, failure, and embodied creativity as alternative ways of imagining later life. The paper brings together literature on creative aging, participatory arts, healthy aging, ageism, and clown performance. It considers how clowning invites participants to engage in improvisation, physical expression, uncertainty, vulnerability, and relational play. Rather than treating mistakes, slowness, or bodily difference solely as signs of decline, clown practice may create an artistic space in which such experiences become materials for expression, interaction, and shared meaning-making. This paper argues that the value of clowning in creative aging should not be assessed only through therapeutic or recreational outcomes. Its broader significance lies in its potential to challenge ageist assumptions that associate later life with passivity, diminished ability, and reduced creativity. By allowing older adults to play, fail, initiate action, be seen, and respond to others, clowning may reposition them as artistic subjects capable of generating new forms of embodied and social experience. The paper therefore proposes clowning as a promising framework for reimagining later life through creativity, participation, and relational possibility.

Authors:
Huang Jui Wen, National University of Tainan, Taiwan

About the Presenter(s)
Jui-Wen Huang is a master’s student in Drama Creation and Application at National University of Tainan. Her interests include applied theatre and clown practice. Her current research explores adult self-awareness in clown workshops.

See this presentation on the full schedule – Monday Schedule

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