Funny women have played starring roles as catalysts in the transformation.

Clowns Without Borders (CWB)-USA has had all-women teams before. But we’ve only begun to explore how audiences respond to shows directed, produced, and performed entirely by women.

This post introduces you to the women who shared laughter with people of all ages in southern Turkey (May 2024) and gives you a front-row seat to the best audience reactions from the tour.

Does an All-Woman Laughter Team Matter?

We think women-led laughter matters and this blog post shares stories to underscore that idea.

Meet the Team

Five women made CWB’s Turkey Tour 2024 a smashing success. Four of them were no strangers to Turkey, and all five were familiar with clowning in areas of crisis.

Anchoring the team were Yasemin Ertorun and Çağdaş Ekin Şişman, talented performers from Istanbul’s SOS clown group. Their familiarity with the Turkish language and culture was invaluable. Gamze Akça Özcan, also of SOS, served as the tour manager, ensuring smooth operations and building on existing connections with NGOs and civil society groups in southern Turkey.

Sabine Choucair, a powerhouse Lebanese-American performer, joined from her base in Turkey. Sabine is a co-founder of Clown Me In, a community-based organization in Lebanon. Completing the team was Luz Gaxiola, who has been on CWB tours in Lebanon, Greece, and Mexico. Luz arrived from Olympia, Washington, with her accordion and clown props ready.

In just ten days, CWB’s all-female team brought laughter and joy to over 2,200 people, including roughly 1,800 children, across Hatay, Kahramanmaraş, and Islahiye, Turkey (May 8th-17th, 2024).

Now that you’ve met the team, let’s meet the audience.

Touching Hearts in Southern Turkey

Of the three million people displaced by the 2023 earthquakes, over 600,000 are still in temporary housing. Usually, that looks like rows and rows of converted metal shipping containers.

The containers are vulnerable to the cold and heat. However, a move to permanent housing is cost-prohibitive due to a shortage of safe property and the inflated cost of rent.

You love to laugh — and you know how much laughter has helped you through difficult moments.

You can give the gift of laughter to a child in crisis every month with a donation of just $11 monthly.

Unexpected Guests

Clowns from Turkey and elsewhere have spent time in Hatay and nearby regions that were hardest hit by the earthquake. So some people have met clowns, while others haven’t.

“We surprised many people going about their day. They seemed shocked and amazed to find a parade of clowns and children playing music and blowing bubbles in the streets. Some people just shared a silly moment with us, and others gathered their friends and family, followed the parade, and joined us for the show.”

“One kid came at the end of the show to take a photo with Sabouny (Sabine’s clown character). She was 5 years old and didn’t want to look at the camera at all. She just wanted to be near the clown and looked at her in awe for a long moment.”

– Luz Gaxiola

“Nobody Cared Anymore” was the Transformation

CWB’s impact goes beyond eliciting laughs. We aim to transform.

“[The audience sees] four women onstage being ridiculous and being happy about how ridiculous we are, enjoying the failures and enjoying every part of the show and what we were doing…[The show] was like a celebration. We got to a point where nobody cared anymore. We were all just there, together.” 

– Sabine Choucair

“Nobody cared anymore” isn’t negative. It signifies a beautiful moment of transformation in which audience members felt liberated from societal pressures and self-consciousness. Men, women, and children alike could simply be themselves, united in a celebration of uninhibited joy.

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“There was this teenage girl who was so grumpy. From the beginning of the show, she was like, ‘Who are these clowns?’ ‘Why are there clowns coming here?’ Then, at one point, we were dancing with the girls. We were getting girls from the audience to come and do a silly dance. Then [the grumpy teenager] just decided to come onstage, take my jacket, and put the jacket on and dance with us. [There was] a shift from, ‘Who are these clowns?’ and ‘I’m not going to laugh,’ to being part of the game onstage. 

– Sabine Choucair

Seeing women of their background and identity leading in this way validates and normalizes these experiences, inspiring girls and women to embrace their unique talents and reject limitations imposed by patriarchal structures.

From Shy to “Busting Out” a Melody

Women-led play plants a seed: breaking barriers can be a positive and healthy process. Consider this story from Luz:

“After the show, this little girl showed up holding a box with a melodica in it. She was kind of shy, but she was holding it. So we started encouraging her by saying, ‘Okay, great, let’s see the melodica.’ So then she took it out, but she wasn’t playing it. She needed a few more minutes to be okay with that. So then we were like, ‘Play it!’ So she started playing it, but she was just doing little random sounds. 

“Then I, with my accordion, just started copying her. But she was a little shy, so she did that for a few minutes…and then she busted out this melody. [And we realized,] ‘Oh, you actually play this thing.’ So she started playing this melody, Bella Ciao. And I know Bella Ciao, so it was great because she was playing the melody on the melodica, and I was able to chime in here and there on the accordion. And we ended up having this really sweet duet.”

– Luz Gaxiola

The connection was between two musicians, but also between two women. Inspired by seeing a woman confidently lead and perform, the girl found the courage to express herself. The rarity of this kind of moment highlights the need for more opportunities where girls can see themselves reflected in strong, talented women, and feel empowered to pursue their dreams.

Women Calling the Shots

Sabine has an act where she playfully challenges a man who comes on stage, asking him to demonstrate both masculine and feminine moves. If he refuses, she humorously dismisses him and finds another volunteer.

“I was like, ‘Okay, you’re not going to do that? I’m not interested in you.’ So he left, and I picked somebody else and he was adorable. It was great to have him onstage. He really played along and was so happy to do that.

“Clowns are about, ‘let’s connect on a more deeper level’ and ‘Ya, I’m a woman onstage assuming my role and kicking whoever I want to kick out.’”

– Sabine Choucair

Sabine’s act is a playful yet powerful critique of rigid societal expectations of masculinity. The audience isn’t just passively entertained; they become active participants in questioning these norms. Those who embrace the challenge, like the “adorable” volunteer, demonstrate a willingness to break free from stereotypes.

Conclusion

As we reflect on CWB’s all-women team in Turkey, we see that their impact goes far beyond laughter. In a world where men have traditionally dominated clowning, CWB is flipping the script. Women-led performances challenged societal norms, proving that humor can be a powerful tool for dismantling gender stereotypes.

This is the true magic of CWB-USA: creating spaces where laughter breaks down barriers and brings people together.

The history of women and femme-identifying clowns is richer than some may imagine. What follows is only a smattering.

Early History

Women were jugglers and acrobats in the courts of ancient Egypt, as depicted in tomb paintings from around the year 2000 BCE. They portrayed comic roles in ancient Greek theater, including Phylax comic theater, dating back to the 5th century BCE. Women were even fools and jesters for European aristocracy until the 16th century AD, when the church began condemning their roles in theater and comic entertainment by deeming it immodest. “Jest books,” or books of jokes and quips written by men, became popular during this time, redefining the role of a woman in comedy by her ability to laugh at a man’s jokes rather than tell a joke herself.

Female comics turned to the stage with commedia dell’arte, a campy, comical theater form that was free from theological regulation. It was through this medium, originating in the 16th century, that the modern “clown” began to take shape.

The 18th century saw the birth of what we call “circus,” beginning with Phillip Astley’s Royal Amphitheater in London, in 1773. In 1846, The Royal Amphitheater provided a venue for the first performances, and subsequent newspaper mentions, of “female clowns.” Twelve years later, Amelia Butler was considered the first female circus clown in the United States. More names begin to trickle in: Mlle. Emille with Alhambra Circus (1863); Mlle. Silvia Christoff, “The World’s Only Female Clown (1867); and Ada Isaacs (1869) were the toast of Europe for over a decade. By the end of the 19th century, women were proving that they could indeed tell a joke.

Circus and Vaudeville

From 1895–1899 circuses held bidding wars over lady clowns. In 1895, Evetta Matthews (sometimes billed as Evetta Williams) was hired by the Barnum & Bailey show to be a “lady clown” headliner, a previously unheard of stunt. Evetta stated, “I believe that a woman can do anything for living that a man can do, and do it just as well as a man. All my people laughed at me when I told them that I was going into the ring as a clown. But they do not laugh now, when they see that I can keep an engagement all the time and earn as much or more money than they can in other branches of the business.” The tour was such a success that other circuses began to compete over how many lady clowns they could have on their bills, some boasting as many as four. The gender imbalance remained, since some large circuses at that time had 30 clowns or more.

The English music halls of and the American circuit provided other venues for female comics. Some dressed as, or presented themselves as men, even centering their routines on proper ways to treat women. They dubbed themselves “mashers” and were the godparents of modern drag kings. Others were literal mothers to famous comics. Silent comic Buster Keaton’s mother, Myra, was the first female professional saxophone player and also a champion physical comedienne.

Vaudeville gave way to the dawn of film, and women began to own the screen as well as the stage. One such comedienne, Gale Henry (also known as the inspiration for the character Olive Oyl, formed her own silent film company in 1916 and eventually starred in over 236 comedies from 1913–1933. Her films were ahead of their time, dealing with gender roles, exploring the possibilities of women running the city fire department (Her First Flame, 1919), and running a detective agency (The Detectress, 1919).

Movies and Television

The advent of sound brought the dawn of television. Lucille Ball, Carol Burnett, and Gilda Radner are just a few drops in the proverbial ocean of commediennes who found fame on TV. Phyllis Diller, a stand-up comic who became a household name through television, wore gloves to designate herself as a clown. She stated “I had to wear gloves because all clowns wear gloves.”

These pioneers set the stage for the women clowns of today. Just to name a few: Iryna Ivanytska has gained world acclaim, with her wild wig and fuzzy shoes, as lead clown “Boom” in the theatrical clown show “Aga-Boom”. Pepa Plana of Catalonia helped develop Cirque du Soleil’s “Amaluna”. Her theater shows range from clown interpretations of classic works of literature to political statements on human migration. Gardi Hutter of Switzerland is famous for her washer-woman clown, and specializes in characterizing “female non-virtues,” tossing poise and beauty aside while still conveying a sense of artistry. Amanda Crockett is a physical comic based in Chicago, Illinois, who incorporates juggling and trapeze into her acts, and is a definitive modern vaudevillian.

There are as many women of comedy as there are stars in the sky. We continue to prove that we, indeed, are funny, and always have been.