"Sorry!" 🤣🤡 Clown Workshop at Egypt International Festival for Children's Theatre & Puppetry

6th December 2025

This was my promo for the Egypt International Festival for Children's Theatre & Puppetry - I designed a workshop for 13-16 year old participants. In the end the workshop was attended mainly by teachers and parents and actors with an interest in making work for young people.

And this was the wonderful feedback

The theme of the workshop was "Less Is More" and "Sorry !" became the big apology for any stupid, loud, clumsy, silly, funny idea.

We thought about how the clown arrives, how they leave, how they make comedy without talking, how movement and volume is so important.

We found a group costume inspired by sand dunes: I brought yellow (and red) plastic (Sorry!) ponchos. What esle could we use? Umbrellas, beach balls, a big fish, traffic, horns - anything to do with Alexandria and the coast.

The manner of interacting, teaching and presenting is all mine, but let me give credit for some exercises that are just out there and shared amongst clowning teachers, especially Mick Barnfather's clapping exercise and Clive Barker's approach to

Grandmother's Footsteps. I remove grandma so that the group builds a focal point and listens to each other. My workshop was straight after a great puppetry workshop led by Nour Ben Haj Rhouma and, we connected in a way.

I looked at what objects we could introduce into a basic game structure to create scenes: a swivel chair, a screen, a blindfold, a bell - to interrupt silence, to break tension, to create laughter.

Translating the fixed point of the footsteps exercise to the entrances from Jon Davison's step-laugh exercise, we found ways to jump in and feed off the audience reaction. This group had high energy and a desire to be released and to play.

I asked participants observing, sitting on office chairs to swap items of clothing as a cover for gradually transitioning into Kurt Zarniko and I used Kurt throughout to manage group behaviour, intervene when people explained exercises, play with translation (thanks Nour!) and the translator.

Thanks to Loura and to Nour for recording the video.

They scenes were inspired by the ida of 'making memories' but going in the opposite direction to nostalgia - remembering disaster! What is the most memorable day of their lives and I asked them to interrupt the action with a look to the audience and an apology for the chaos, inclduing a collapsing screen: "Sorry!"

It was a fantastic festival and I will be sharing another post about the performance work by young people and my role as chair of the jury for the schools performances.