Good Medicine Marks 10 Years of Serious Silliness
Celebrating with "10 Silly Yhings" on Sunday
Good Medicine Productions will celebrate its 10th anniversary Sunday with a family-friendly show and party built around the same idea that has guided the Westerville nonprofit for a decade: joy can reach people in places where ordinary words sometimes cannot.
The event, featuring 10 Silly Things!, will run from 5 to 7 p.m. Sunday at the American Legion Hall on East College Avenue in Westerville. It will include a performance by the Good Medicine Specialists, refreshments, carnival-style games, a Silly Walk Zone, rubber chickens, and a finale honoring people who have helped shape the company.
For founder Kristie Koehler Vuocolo, the milestone marks 10 years of public performances, classes, camps, and outreach programs that bring comedy and connection to seniors, children, and families across Central Ohio.
When Vuocolo returned to Westerville in 2013, she thought she might be done being an artist.
She had spent years in Chicago working as an actor, producer, and comedic performer, much of it in physical comedy, clown theater, and healthcare settings. Then she came home with her family, ready for a different chapter.
“I was like, all right, I won’t be an artist anymore here,” she said. “I’ll be about raising family.”
Life had other plans.
A few weeks after moving back to Westerville, Vuocolo’s mother died unexpectedly. The grief was heavy. For a time, the artistic life she had known in Chicago felt far away.
Then came Hamilton.
In 2015, Vuocolo began listening to the musical on repeat. Something about it reopened a door she thought had closed.
“It reopened my artistic heart,” she said. “It was making me think things are possible.”
That Christmas, her husband gave her a single ticket to see the show in New York. The note with it said: “Don’t ever feel stuck. Go see Hamilton and come back to Ohio and make some art.”
A blizzard shut down Broadway the night she went to New York for the show. Friends later helped get her back to New York, and by early 2016, she had finally seen the show and returned to Westerville with a renewed sense of purpose.
The result was Good Medicine Productions.
It Started With Scrooge
Good Medicine began in 2016 with Uptown Scrooge, Vuocolo’s walking-tour adaptation of A Christmas Carol.
Instead of sitting in a theater, audiences moved through Uptown Westerville businesses as part of Scrooge’s journey. They weren’t watching from a distance; in a sense, they were Scrooge.
Vuocolo had seen similar site-specific theater in Chicago and wondered whether something like it could work in Westerville.
So she began asking Uptown merchants.
“Everyone I approached said yes,” she said. “They had never heard about this kind of thing, but they just said yes.”
The first year sold out before opening.
That success did more than launch a holiday tradition. It provided the seed money for the work Vuocolo had wanted to do all along: sending trained performers into senior living facilities and pediatric care settings.
The Work Behind the Laughter
Before founding Good Medicine, Vuocolo spent 10 years with the Big Apple Circus Clown Care Unit, where performers visited children’s hospitals and nursing homes. That experience shaped Good Medicine’s outreach model.
She is careful with the word “clown.”
Not big rainbow wigs. Not oversized shoes. Not the horror-movie version.
“When I’m talking about clown theater, it’s about authentic connection with an audience,” she said. “There’s no fourth wall.”
Good Medicine performers use improvisation, music, physical comedy, and gentle audience participation. In senior facilities, there is no fixed script. The performers enter as lovable, ridiculous characters who often need help from the residents.
That reversal matters.
“If someone says no, we say, all right, we’ll move on,” Vuocolo said. “That is your first gift of empowerment in a place where you don’t get a lot of choices.”
The performers meet people where they are, whether through a song, a joke, a silly walk, a made-up language, or simply a personal greeting.
Vuocolo remembers one early visit to a Westerville senior facility. A resident who had lived there for two years was known to communicate primarily through sounds that staff struggled to understand. Good Medicine performers interacted with her in what they call “moon language.” When Vuocolo said goodbye, the woman answered clearly: “I love you very much.”
Staff members cried, Vuocolo recalled, telling her it was the first time they had heard the resident speak recognizable words.
“I think that is the power of the work that we do,” she said.
The impact of healthcare clowning extends far beyond any single visit.
Rosie Colucci, a brain cancer patient who shared her experience with hospital clowns in a video testimonial, said the performers helped her through some of the most difficult moments of her life.
“Without them, I don’t know how I would have gotten through so many tough, long chemotherapy hours in Day Hospital,” Colucci said. “They have brought me so much more than just laughter, joy, and happiness. They have helped me through my toughest, most difficult times of pain, anguish, heartbreak, and tears.”
Even after receiving a devastating diagnosis, she said, the clowns reminded her there was still room for joy.
“They have given me hope when there wasn’t any,” she said.
A Westerville Company With a Wider Reach
Today, Good Medicine’s senior program serves 12 facilities, with performers making visits as many as 24 times each month. Its pediatric outreach is centered at the Ronald McDonald House, where performers visit twice monthly with children, siblings, and families.
While Good Medicine is known publicly for productions such as Uptown Scrooge and its theater classes, much of its work happens away from the stage. Professionally trained performers bring improv, physical comedy, and music directly into nursing homes, memory-care units, and pediatric settings throughout Central Ohio.
Working one-on-one with seniors and with children and families facing medical challenges, the performers create moments of connection designed to ease anxiety, reduce isolation, and restore a sense of agency.
The public shows, classes and camps help make that work possible. Revenue from Good Medicine’s productions and educational programs supports the year-round outreach program.
That connection is central to the company’s model. A ticket to a silly show in Westerville helps fund moments of laughter in a memory-care unit or with a family staying at the Ronald McDonald House.
Vuocolo also takes pride in another part of the model: the artists are paid.
“A lot of times I think people think that we’re volunteers,” she said. “I’m personally very proud that we pay our artists.”
The Good Medicine specialist ensemble now includes nine performers. Many also appear in the company’s public productions, including Uptown Scrooge, Uptown Ghost Story Tours, Scrooge: Abridged, and other events.
Vuocolo looks for performers who can be physically bold, emotionally open, and ready for anything.
“Not all actors can do this,” she said. “There is no script.”
Ten Silly Years
Good Medicine will celebrate its 10th anniversary from 5 to 7 p.m. Sunday at the American Legion Hall on East College Avenue.
The event will feature 10 Silly Things!, a family-friendly performance by the Good Medicine Specialists, along with refreshments, carnival-style games and opportunities for the community to celebrate a decade of laughter and connection.
The evening is intended to be part party, part performance, and all heart. Guests can expect Good Medicine-style fun, including a Silly Walk Zone, rubber chickens and other playful surprises, followed by a finale honoring the people and organizations that have helped make the company’s work possible.
“For ten years, we’ve been bringing moments of joy into spaces that can feel overwhelming or isolating,” Vuocolo said. “This celebration is a chance to share that spirit with the entire community.”
Thanks to sponsorship from the Choose Kind Foundation, tickets are available on a suggested-donation basis, helping keep the event accessible to everyone.
“We really want it to feel family-friendly,” Vuocolo said. “We want lots of kids there.”
The company is also marking the anniversary by bringing Uptown Scrooge to MadLab Theatre in downtown Columbus this December, the first time the production will be performed in a traditional theater.
Still, Westerville remains the place where Good Medicine began and where its particular brand of joyful disorder first found an audience.
For Vuocolo, the last 10 years have shown what can happen when a community says yes to something a little strange, a little risky, and very human.
It began with Scrooge walking through Uptown.
It continues in senior living rooms, family homes, on sidewalks, in storefronts, and anywhere someone might need a laugh.
Good Medicine’s work may look silly.
That is part of the point.
Beneath the rubber chickens, ridiculous walks, and improvised songs is something serious: the belief that joy can reach people in places where ordinary words sometimes cannot.
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