BEIRUT — The Middle East's first school for street theater, the International Institute for Very Very Serious Studies (IIVVSS), opened its doors Sept. 1 in Beirut, specializing in clowning. Most people have been exposed to the discipline, but they remain unaware of the scholarship, history, social commentary and satire surrounding it.

“[Saying] ‘I want to be a clown’ means you want to be a figure who brings humor to society,” Giovanni Fusetti, a self-described interdisciplinary fool, told Al-Monitor. “It is very profound, but it is very hard, and of course you need to learn how to do it.”

Fusetti, who studied under Jacques Lecoq, the esteemed French physical theater teacher and clown, will be educating the next generation of clowns, teaching a course on satire and the buffoon at the IIVVSS. Twelve students from the Middle East, selected from more than 70 applicants, will undertake a six-month intensive program that culminates with a public performance focusing on local grievances from around Lebanon.

Sabine Choucair, founder of IIVVSS and its parent organization, Clown Me In, told Al-Monitor, “[Groups of three] artists will go to a municipality in Lebanon and work with 20 youths from the community and with them pinpoint the social problems they want to talk about.”