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Post the Circ'us project in 2016 few of the participants in Egypt remained in touch with participants in Germany. This connection developed towards a creation of a performance in Cairo and an art residency hosted by Cabuwazi circus in Berlin. Seven Egyptian and German artists named "Koshari" stayed on the circus grounds at Altglienike in the easters suburbs of Berlin for a whole month towards the creation of a contemporary circus piece. The performance developed through this period was presented in the beginning of August 2017 in Zirkus 2:0 circus festival in Altglienike. It was a rich and dense experience that will allow the Koshari collective to further develop their performance and their collective contemporary circus practice further through further residencies and artistic direction support.

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In  2015 and 2016 Red Tomato was invited to take part in The 17th and the 18th Carthage Theatre days. The Red tomatoes  clown performance toured the streets of fifteen cities and villages all over Tunisia. We also performed in two of the main university campus in Tunisia and Carthage.

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Red Tomato is a theatre group that aims to create high standard drama practices serving to develop the society, with a focus on the marginalized, such as refugees, street children and low-income communities Red Tomato gives opportunities to learn and to express points of view that might otherwise never be heard We are a team of artists from different backgrounds and nationalities who came together with the belief that change is important and can be fun, and that learning should be pleasurable and collaborative

“ FUN IS OUR SERIOUS BUSINESS”

These are snippets of some of our performances in Cairo 

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Circ’us project (2016) was a joint project between Goethe, The French institute in Egypt, Nomadways and Mahatat for contemporary arts. I was part of the contemporary circus performance that was created through a residency in Port Said north, east the Egyptian delta. This residency included Egyptian, French and German artists that collaborated over the span of ten days to create a piece that they toured with over during another ten days all across the Nile Delta. Throughout the period of the residency and the tour the artists gave a series of workshops to children and to youth in the different villages and towns they visited with their performance.

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In 2015 Red Tomato was invited to perform in the first African circus festival in Addis Ababa. Through the festival I was not only introduced to different circus groups from all over Africa. I was also introduced to the wider social circus movement that has been catering to drastic global changes.

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A video documentation of Art Transit/Mahtat for contemporary art project, featuring Red Tomato/Outa Hamra street clowning and social theatre group public tour in Port-Said, Damietta, Mansoura and Cairo form 11 to 16 - June 2015.

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After four years of working together  in Red Tomato collective with three other members, Noha (Egypt) and Ophelie (France) decided to explore a duo-form highlighting similar life experiences but also how their origins and what they explore nowadays give them different perceptions of public space, performing arts, and more generally interactions with the larger society. We are here exploring how the public space affects our female bodies in the light of where we come from; how we experienced this violence, perceive it and how it has affected us in different ways. Yet, how our femininity brings us together and links the two of us very strongly. Therefore this duo expresses the commonness and difference towards the heaviness and the prejudiceness provoked by the external environment in which we exist. The use of clowning techniques, the mask represented by the nose, gives us a large scope to explore perceptions and misperceptions.

This video was created through out our first two weeks of exploration and we remain to work on the creation process. The making of the duo is still in progress. We are currently seeking more support through art direction, work space sharing and performing possibilities. 

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This Contemporary dance  workshop (2015) was part of the independent film “Cactus Flower” by director Hala Al Koussy. This workshop yielded a series of performances/physical manifestations which were weaved as dreams throughout the film’s plot.