clownswithoutborders.org

Gwen and Elisa return to Cairo for their fifth project. This time joined by Nate Dixon and three local artists, Maysara, Nora and Jakob who perform with the Cairo based group: El Khayal El Sha’bi, which means, The Folkloric Imagination.

Project Egypt visited Cairo, Egypt for the forth year in a row. The majority of the children we saw were refugees from Sudan living in inner-city Cairo. Some other groups we visited were Egyptian orphans, street kids, children with cancer or developmental disabilities and refugees from Iraq, Palestine, Eritrea and other counties.

When we first clowned for the girls they were quite shy and unsure about all of our strange, silly behavior. Nevertheless, last year, when we returned and performed a second time, the girls seemed to remember us and they enjoyed our show a whole lot more. As for our most recent visit, I am very pleased to report that the girls were ecstatic to see us again, and that they laughed thoroughly at our clownish proceedings. Not only that, they seemed to have been anticipating our return and had much they wished to share with us: particularly acrobatics!

Gwendolyn Rooker and I returned to Cairo, Egypt for three weeks of performances and workshops focused towards Sudanese refugees. We also performed at some of the institutions which we visited on our first trip to Cairo in February 2006.