torbeck dec 13th evening

Evening Dec 13th

First show goes quite well, a little rough around the edges of course but there is a lot of laughter. We play for young adults in a technology institute, right in the heart of the old part of Les Cayes, the bigger town near Torbeck. The buildings there are older, colonial, a few quite ancient relics.
There is an old building with a sign on it that says ‘Cour d’Appel’ which means appeals court, and it has a ‘for sale’ sign on it. It is definitely older, slightly crumbling, justice has been moved elsewhere. Nearby is a low building that says “Douanes” (customs) but there doesn’t seem to be much activity around. I start to conjecture why Haiti is a transfer spot for drug smuggling. There doesn’t seem to be much presence to stop it.
Another building nearby, two story long, is the tax collection center. Outside the building a lone car is parked, a relatively new black Mercedes. I start wondering where the money came from to buy the car and who owns it….
As I type downstairs, Sarah, Elisa and Brendon are teaching some of the local kids to walk on stilts. The level of energy is quite high, big screams of delight and laughter, as one after another tries and succeeds to walk on their own power. We are teaching workshops every day after our shows, and Monday afternoon, we hope to be able to include some of our students in a show.
Meanwhile dinner is served and waiting. The platters of food are sitting under plastic mesh covers to protect it from flies, standard sanitary practice in developing countries to protect us fragile humans from the untold diseases that those tiny legs can carry from one place to another.
Another burst of screams and laughter as another kid gets up onto the stilts. Some drumming has now started alongside it. No doubt it will be a little while before we eat, but who needs hot food when these kids are having so much fun. All this wonder happening in the dim light of a light of a single naked 40 watt energy saving bulb.
Moshe

torbeck dec 13th

There is the hum, well it is not really a hum, but the roar of the generator in the back yard powering the modem for the internet. Sometimes there is electricity, and then sometimes not. Same thing with the water, pretty typical on this economic level of reality. I just took a look at the hurricane watch on the internet, and realize how lucky we are that the Hurricane that totally flooded the Dominican republic missed our neck of the woods, only a hundred or two miles away.  That didn’t stop the thunder and lightening and sheets of rain coming down during the night and morning that turned the dirt and rock road outside the rectory gate (where we are staying) into a little stream…The only advantage of it all is that there was not a constant chorus of rooster crows at 4am waking me up although the thunder and lightning did the job just fine.
Due to the intense rains, the kids did not go to school today, so we didn’t go to their school to play. There are no school buses that I am aware of in Torbeck, and aside from the one national highway, there are no  paved roads that I have seen, or even smooth gravel roads.  Most that we have traveled on require careful navigating to avoid deep ruts, and that in a landrover.

Yesterday as we headed out to Maison de Naisance, a birthing clinic who is coordinating our time here in Torbeck, we saw tons of kids, all in uniforms, walking to school.  A few rode on the back of their father’s motorbike, but most were walking. Later this afternoon, we will go off in a few hours to play a late afternoon show.  Father Sadoni, who runs the rectory, was telling us this morning how it rained 22 days during the month of November and the kids were only able to go to school for 4 days during the month.  He told us that they had to reschedule examinations as a result of that.
We took advantage of the downtime to continue rehearsing the show, narrowing down the routines we’ve created and plugging holes in transitions. It is now pretty much in place and we look forward to playing it. We are scheduled for 11 shows in the next five days before heading back to Port au Prince where we will be playing quite a few more in the week that follows.
Moshe

A hard rain is gonna fall

Last night we faced a planning dilemma:  We wanted time to rehearse our show….but we were also scheduled to perform FOUR shows today.  Do the work? Or do the work to make the work better? Or do both?

Well, Mother Nature made the decision for us.  The rains came last night and haven’t stopped yet… so while it hasn’t been enough rain to cause alarm, it’s enough to keep the school children (and us) at home.

So we rehearse.

Personally, I’m looking forward to nailing this puppy down. We’ve got a loose structure with some solid acts, but  no throughline or theme quite yet.  We are all new to each other. This group of four has never worked together before, and we must learn how best to play with each other.

Last night, we spoke about our ideas of what clowning is, what our experience is, and what CWB is…and it was clear that we’re all coming from different places. But we are all here to make the world a better place through laughter and humanity.  Let that be the guide in our process and product.

–Brendon

The Shows Begin …

Some of us never met before Tuesday’s grand convergence at Newark Airport, and today we performed three shows together.  It has been a fast coming together, a working and re-working of ideas, and now today the first show, and then another, and then another.  The show begins with a mixed-up clown greeting, an overlapping of French, Haitian Creole (kreyol ayisyen) - Moshe and I have found a bit of announcer and translator - and the international language of physical comic relationship.  I find comedy in simply being able to greet the crown in creole - it’s something Haitians don’t expect white people to necessarily be able to do.  When I finally get out a proud “Bon swa, tout moun!” (good afternoon, everyone!) I get a laugh.

Brendon and Elisa keep the intensity high with a slapstick acrobatic routine.  They then resolve their conflict and come together in play, collaborating on a magic trick.  Lots of magic tricks … lots of play … Moshe flips cigar boxes, accompanied by our trombone, drum and slide whistle band.  A stilt chase.  A dance.

A lot of play … and a lot of people ready and eager to play.  While there is great need for so many things everywhere we look, and people do ask us for money and for our props and costumes, they are so often able to turn around and laugh at a trick, participate in the show, or join us in dancing and singing.  Three times in the past two days we have found ourselves sharing music and comic dance with a group of laughing people - drums appear, people clap hands, and our informal walk-around entertaining turns into a spontaneous party.  A lot of play.

Sarah Liane Foster

Torbeck, Ayiti, 12/12/07

Welcome to Haiti

Please don’t call it Hate-i, as the cab driver who picks me up in Brooklyn to take me to the Newark airport says. he is from there. Ayiti is how they pronounce it, which sounds so much sweeter than Hate-i, don’t you think? From where I write, I hear the constant honking in the streets below, birds chirping in the trees and the sounds of roosters calling to the early morning.
There are four of us Elisa, Brendon, Sarah Liane and myself, Moshe, here to do shows in the area of Torbeck, and then in the capital-Port au Prince. Ayiti is the poorest country in the WEstern Hemisphere, and we are here, Clowns Without Borders to spread laughter for the children in this country where there are no lack of crises, any way you look. WE will be writing here when we can to describe our experiences as we go along. We will be doing two shows a day every day in Torbeck. When we return to Port au Prince, Tim will be coming into join us, and the expedition will become two pronged, with two shows simultaneously happening twice a day in different parts of town.

Clowns without Borders has been here before. The Canadian contingent has been coming here for the past 4 years, and has developed a relationship with the Foyer Lakal in P-a-P, which takes care of street children. They have been training some of the kids to juggle, ride unicycle and more. We will be going to visit them several times while we are here, and work with the kids to continue their training. The USA contingent has been here 3 times in the past two years. This summer a Spanish group came and performed for 10 days straight.

More to follow as we get going…..

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