Sabine is a Lebanese humanitarian clown and performer, who has been working with different communities around the world.
Once upon a time, little Sabina grew up in Lebanon during the civil war, which lasted from 1975 to 1990.
How did living your early years in a war zone shape you into a humanitarian clown?
It was a long process of self-discovery!
As I was discovering my own clown, I realized I had many emotions and memories from that time, particularly the feeling that life was against me! Growing up in a war zone often made me feel that life was intentionally unfair.
Through clown work, I discovered my inner clown was paranoid! This paranoia became humorous because clowning involves allowing people to laugh at you and your failures.
My audience would laugh at my paranoia and over time, I learned to find it funny myself. This transformation turned my problem into a game, making things easier and simpler.
I decided that I wanted to do clowning for the rest of my life. I wanted to enjoy life and make fun of it, embracing shared laughter over traumas that shape our perception of life as humans.
I have no doubt that my war experience deeply influenced my work as a humanitarian clown. When performing for children in war zones, I feel no fear or prejudice towards their feelings because I have been there myself. I know that no matter the circumstances, everyone deserves a moment of laughter and fun. Just like eating and drinking are human rights, so is the right to pause and laugh before proceeding with life.
So, you studied theatre in Lebanon and then travelled to the UK to study performing arts, specializing in clowning and storytelling. What are clowning and storytelling, to begin with?
While studying physical theatre in the UK, I also studied clowning as a performance art. For me, clowning is a meeting with our true selves, as we accept ourselves when we discover this persona or clown character. It’s simply who we are, how we play, how we dream, how we think differently, and how we break free from our social conditioning.
In clowning, whether we perform in the theatre, on the street or elsewhere, we show our true selves and live in the moment without being stuck in the past or the future. We look at today and ask ourselves, what are we living, and how can we find the game in it? It’s all about having fun, letting others have fun and turning it into something poetic that gives us hope to proceed in life. This is clowning for me.
Moreover, the link between storytelling and clowning is very natural because, to me, clowning is life, and life is all stories. So, I take stories from life and turn them into clowning performances.
You also studied social therapy in New York. Tell us how you connected what you studied with clown work.
The core of what I studied in social therapy focuses on how to deal with what we call “life problems.”
“Since there are no magical solutions to many life circumstances, which we identify as problems, in a way, there are no problems!”
You experience something, and this something creates obstacles. Instead of fixing those so-called problems that have no solutions, you transform and play with them.
For example, we have a clowning exercise that asks the clown to create a problem. For instance, the clown’s umbrella doesn’t open, but whenever they solve this silly problem, they create another one. So, for example you finally manage to open the umbrella, but you accidentally hit someone next to you on the head. Trying to help them, you accidentally create another problem, and so on.
You keep discovering a new problem, every time you solve one, and this is life. We entertain ourselves as we navigate through them.
You are the co-founder of a clown troupe called “Clown Me In.” How did it start and develop over time? What do you offer at the moment, and how can people support you?
I started “Clown Me In” in Mexico with a friend, Gabriela Munoz. We aimed to spread laughter and healing in the streets, hence the name Clown Me In.
Our journey began in Mexico, where we taught in universities and worked with Indigenous communities. From there, we went to Brazil and collaborated with amazon communities, then moved to India to work with local communities and perform in the streets.
Upon returning to Lebanon, I decided to build a team there. Clowning wasn’t well known in Lebanon, where most people associated it with the typical birthday clown. To change this perception, I started offering clown workshops. One workshop continued beyond its initial scope, leading me to establish Clown Me In, in Lebanon as well. The participants I trained became part of the team, which started with five people and has since grown significantly.
Initially, we operated without funds, focusing on refugee camps and using clowning to address political frustrations. As we grew, more people joined us, and we secured funding for larger projects.
One notable project was the Caravan Project, which went viral. I spent three months in various refugee camps in Lebanon, conducting storytelling workshops and social therapy with women, men and children to collect their stories.
We recorded and edited these personal stories, which were then performed by Syrian refugees that we trained in acting. We toured with these performances across Lebanon, receiving great feedback and sparking dialogue. This success took us to Tunisia, where we earned a grant that enabled us to take the project to Europe.
At the moment, Clown Me In, focuses on three main activities: performing in various places, engaging in Artivism-activism through art and giving workshops.
In addition, Clown Me In established a school called The International Institute Of Very Very Serious Studies. This school requires participants to be professional artists with a background in theatre and a strong interest in activism.
Over a year and a half they study clowning, bouffon, mask work and other skills useful for street performances aimed at artivism.
After their training, each group of three works in a specific community, selecting fifteen youths aged fifteen to twenty. They teach these young people the skills they have learned and create street performances based on the youths’ stories, reflecting their environment and issues they want to express through artivism.
How did the Beirut explosion on the 4th of August 2020 affect you?
I was in Beirut at the time of the explosion, and all of our team members lived in neighbourhoods close to the blast. Some of their homes were seriously affected. The first thing we did was go out in the streets and start cleaning up. It was an incredibly sad time. We were traumatized by the explosion, which compounded the trauma we experienced as children living through war.
For the first couple of days, we focused on cleaning. Then we asked ourselves, what are we doing? We are clowns! Why not perform?! We debated if it was appropriate to perform while so many had died or lost their homes. Ultimately, we decided to perform. People needed to laugh and have hope to continue.
So we put together a show and performed in the streets. The impact was amazing. We started two weeks after the explosion and continued for a month. One memorable moment was when a little girl who had stopped talking due to the trauma of the explosion attended our show. Her mother later told us that after the performance, her daughter spoke to her own father about the show. Moments like these show how important it is to bring joy, even in the darkest times.
You are now based in Istanbul. Can you tell us about your projects there and how people can reach you?
After four months of moving to Istanbul with my family, an earthquake struck southern Turkey, claiming 50000 lives and deeply affecting the country. I collaborated with another clown named Guray Dincol, from the international organization Clowns Without Borders, where I’m also a member.
We recruited people interested in clowning, conducted a two-week workshop for twenty participants, and selected ten to form our troupe, which we called SOS.
We toured extensively in southern Turkey. Currently, I perform with SOS in Turkey and offer clown workshops to individuals and corporations. I work with the Clowns Without Borders organization full-time as the artistic director and co-founder of Clown Me In in Lebanon. For the latest updates, people can follow me on my Instagram page.
Sabine Choucair
A Lebanese-American humanitarian clown and performer. The first female clown to receive the “Premio Clown Nel Cuore” award in Italy. With qualifications in performing arts from London and social therapy from New York, she has been working with different communities around the world.
She co-founded Clown Me In in Lebanon and Mexico, a group using the art of clowning to fight social injustice. She is a member of Clowns Without Borders USA spreading joy and laughter among disadvantaged communities. She’s the artistic director of the International Institute for Very Very Serious Studies a performance training program in Beirut focusing on social street theatre as well as the Caravan street theatre productions that take refugee and human rights stories to more than 100 communities in Lebanon and Tunisia and Europe.
Sabine was among the 40 cultural leaders chosen to share their work at the World Economic Forum in Jan17.
Her theatre and therapy projects led her to work in Lebanon, The UK, The US, Brazil, Mexico, India, Canada, Cyprus, Tunisia, Sweden, Switzerland, Belgium, France, Cameroon, Morocco, Jordan and Dubai.
