Janana mobile festival - 29 March till 2 April 2013

Like every year Clown Me In performs and gives workshops for Palestinian refugees (and this year for Syrian refugees as well) by touring with Al Jana during Janana Mobile festival.

Mask making workshop this year was a great success. The best so far I guess

Social Therapy with Syrian Refugees in the Bekaa – (Mercy Corps org) February 2013

6 days of social therapy sessions and 6 other days of follow up with 14 Syrian Refugees ( age: 17 to 35) living in Baalbeck. Most of them had just moved to Lebanon in the past 3 to 4 months after facing harsh conditions in Syria.

The group was amazing and they were so good in creating the conditions of their own therapy.

The activities were divided into different parts, among which: collaboration and improvisation using means including music, theatre, poetry, community projects, sports, and storytelling.
Social therapy enables people to experience life in new ways. It does not seek to solve problems, but to help participants accept life's difficulties and create practical, positive ways to deal with them which they surely did!

Mlawan Campaign (Flower’s garden) December 2012- Jan 2013

Mlawan is a campaign that encourages caregivers and children to lead a healthy lifestyle.





I had the pleasure of taking part of this campaign where I devised and performed






"Flower's Garden": a storytelling performance where kids are introduced to three stories about the beauty of nature, the strength of children, the importance of a healthy community life.
The performance is presented in an adventure like style where mime, clowning, circus techniques, hula hooping, role playing and physical theater merge in an interactive form.



We toured more than 30 schools and centers in Lebanon, performed for more than 4000 kids. Although the performance was very well received by kids who interacted with “flower” all the time I found it disgraceful to see teachers and school directors not knowing how to behave in a theatre.
Are they only used to pre recorded theatre productions?



The campaign is going to be launched again next month and flower’s garden will be touring again. I certainly will have a new rule!
ONLY kids will be allowed in the theatre :)

Karyat Al Insan (Drugs rehab center- Lebanon) November 2012

Clown Me In spent a month time with 20 guys who are trying to get emotionally and physically unattached to the use of drugs.

We did some clowning/storytelling and social therapy during one month. I would definitely say it was one the best experiences in rehab centers so far where we (as a group) were given the complete freedom to do everything we wanted with no restriction of any kind.

We surely had lots of fun during the workshop but also lots of true tough genuine moments.
I love these guys; they really taught me the importance of trust in a country where we always doubt everything and everybody.

here are some notes i got when i left them.