Clown Me In performed at the 35th Neapolis International Kids Theatre Festival in Yasmine el Hamammet, Tunis and Neapolis in Tunisia to a collective audience of around 700 persons.

The festival invited 13 theatre groups from Algeria, Tunisia, Brussels, Brazil, France, UAE, Cyprus, Serbia, Egypt, and Lebanon. Clown Me In also participated in talks with other performers, street performers, theater performers, actors, and puppeteers, while promoting theater for children and young audiences.

A few stories from the clowns:

All through the festival we found ourselves surrounded by so much positive energy and an abundance of love. Sabouny even had a genuine moment of “fou rire” (non stop laughing and giggles in French) when she was marrying this lovely guy called “Mabrouk” (congratulations in Arabic). Not everything goes as planned and we sometimes we have much better time follwoing the curveball we are thrown!

Kids and adults kept approaching the clowns and repeating some of the sentences that they had memorized from the performance such as “I loooove you” and they would then shower them with hugs and kisses.

In one of the scenes, we invited adults to play with us. A few of us clowns walked toward the public to choose some volunteers from the crowd. One of the clowns approached a woman who seemed untalkative, sitting in a corner all by herself. She was hesitant to come on stage and requested to have them take her daughter instead. But since this specific scene could only be performed by an adult, we insisted on having her go on stage, and in the split of a second, we saw her eyes sparkle in great excitement. She whispered to her daughter: “Look my darling, I’m going to be in the show! I’m doing it for you!” She no longer was this hidden woman in the corner. She stood in front of hundreds of people and did it so naturally, that we almost forgot she was not part of the clowns.