Report

Saturday 8th and Sunday 9th November 08.

Warmest clown greetings from Jeruselem.

We’ve been having a great time. We did a crazy show for the kids in burj luq luq in Old Jeruselem. It started late and ended in darkness cos it gets dark here so early. The kids were incredibly mischievous, always running everywhere and sometimes running everywhere with our equipment. We met a guy called Fadi who’ll be working with us. He had a kitten that he’d just rescued that morning. He kept an eye on our show and gave us some notes on our show for the more conservative areas in Northern Palestine, and good news, we only have to change one bit.

We played near the Flower Gate in the old city in a magical enclosed area with two trees growing out of the stone. It was cool.

Today we did a show in Beit Noam on the road to Tel Aviv for people who are severly handicapped. It went really really (really x 5) well, giving us a great lift.

Fadi has organised lots of useful stuff. Our show tomorrow is cancelled but Flora is gonna give an aerial workshop. People have trouble receiving Sky Movies in Ramallah so she’s gonna help them put up their aerials using ‘The Tissue’ and ‘trapeze’. It will be amazing. We rented a car at the airport but apparently we need yellow plates to travel to some places in Palestine so we might not get as much use out of it as we planned. Everybody has been really helpful. The hotel we’re staying at is a bit of a dive but it has some interesting old characters who welcome you like a son and then forget who you are the following morning and ask you if you’d like to rent a room.

That’s all for now.

Dear readers, please try not to think of us walking around in t-shirts as the beautiful sun shines down upon us while you freeze your behinds off in our miserable country. No, instead you should think about the fact that our costumes, especially our socks are beginning to stink badly and soon we’ll be receiving complaints from our audience members about the smell coming from us.

Monday 10th November

Today we crossed into Ramallah and drove past the peace wall and the tangles of barbed wire that greets all visitors as they arrive.
Having struggled to find our bearings (our Satelite navigation system was a bit befuddled poor thing..probably her first time in Ramallah too) we stopped to ask directions but being clowns we stopped at the tomb of Yasser Arafat. The guards were confused by us but very friendly and soon sent us on our way.
Fadi picked us up at our hotel and took us to the Palestinian circus school who are our partners for the week. Our afternoon was spent there giving workshops to their students. Colm struck up a lovely understanding with a young juggeler called Hamouda, who has no English but a great hunger to learn. (it’ll be no great surprise if Colm soon runs out of things to teach him)
In the evening we outlined the plans for week. Wednesday is the big day when we perform for the opening of the International Palestinian Film Festival. A fun week ahead for all!

Tuesday 11th November

A full day spent at Pal. circus with Fadi, his brother Saedi and their students. We each worked on pieces for Wednesday’s opening and were impressed with the end of day results. Hamouda and Maice developed a lovely clown juggling piece under the direction of Colm, while Bryan and Fadi rehearsed their hip hop drumming and juggling on the circus bus number(I know!… it does sound mad doesn’t it!)
Bryan also pops up on most of the other numbers with some beautiful musical accompaniment with Colm playing the saw for little Sousan’s lovely tissue piece. Fadi was stunned when he heard Colm’s saw for the first time and he still hasn’t gotten used to it. One of the amazing things about the Palestinian Circus students is their hunger to learn new things..given any chance they all bound over to play with Bryan’s drums or Flora’s hula hoops, Jonathan’s puppets or Colm’s haircut.
A little mention of the little kids who stop over on their way home from school and get their first taste of juggling, puppets, ukelele and drumming. We have good vibes going on with that posse of under 10’s.

Once again we would like to thank Culture Ireland for making this trip possible.
Please send this report onto your friends and spread the word.
The Clowns.