AP Television

Bar Elias, Bekaa Valley, Lebanon, 6th June 2014

1. Wide of clowns arriving in refugee camp in Bar Elias

2. Close up of child looking at clowns arriving

3. More of clowns arriving at refugee camp

4. Syrian children clapping and laughing

5. Wide of clowns during performance in Bar Elias

6. SOUNDBITE (English) Sabine Choucair, Clown, Clowns Without Borders:

"I think the only philosophy behind this is having fun and how, like, what's best than going from a war zone where you have people who are feeling unsafe, who are feeling really unhappy and feeling horrified of things, what's best than clowning around with them and having fun."

7. Wide of clowns during performance

8. Various of performance

9. Close up of children clapping and smiling

10. Clown during performance

11. SOUNDBITE (English) David Clay, Clown, Clowns Without Borders:

"Is clowning worthwhile? Should we spend money on clowning? I look at the show today�and I, you know, yes, this is a form of relief work, this is a good thing. I know that we are helping kids. I have been in hospitals where children were so shocked in the head, they couldn't speak, they wouldn't react to anything. We came, we did stuff and for the first time they smile you know and everybody goes, "wooooh we couldn't get them to do that in two months and you guys came�five minutes," you know."

12. Various of clowns during performance

13. Syrian children looking at performance

14. More of clowns

15. SOUNDBITE (English) Sabine Choucair, Clown, Clowns Without Borders:

"If you laugh you have all your muscles going "hiiiii" and then you feel more relaxed and then it's good for the heart, it's good for the mind, it's good for everything, it's good for the body, you feel you are more open, you are more accepting of the other. I mean just try to laugh now and see what's�.it's different."

16. Children looking at clowns

17. Clowns during show

18. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Bilal Al Sharqawi, Syrian refugee in Lebanon:

"Today was better than yesterday, today there was a show. Yesterday, we just played football."

19. Clown juggling

20. Syrian women looking at the show

21. Clowns playing music

22. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Amina Umm Said, Syrian Palestinian refugee:

"We used to only hear the sound of missiles, and shelling and the war. Even now, we have fear. We still have fear in our hearts, and the fear needs to be expelled from our hearts. We need festivals like this one to push the fear from our hearts and minds."

23. Various of Syrian children dancing and jumping with clowns

The children are curious but guarded at first as a troupe of clowns makes its way into the refugee camp that is, for now, their home in Lebanon.

In a blur of colour and polka dots and to the tune of a guitar played by a clown on stilts the children finally begin to laugh.

For the 50 children or so watching, all of them refugees from the civil war in neighbouring Syria, the clowns are providing a brief distraction from the horrors they've seen and the challenges of growing up far from home.

They are among the more than 1 million Syrians who have flooded into Lebanon over the past three years, fleeing the violence that has ripped apart their homeland.

"Going from a war zone where you have people who are feeling unsafe, who are feeling really unhappy and feeling horrified of things, what's best than clowning around with them and having fun?" asks one of the clowns, Sabine Choucair.

The 45-minute show on a stony patch of ground is set among rows of tents in a makeshift camp in Bar Elias in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley. It has been organised by Clowns Without Borders, an international humanitarian group that uses laughter to help those suffering from the trauma of armed conflicts.

Four clowns - Choucair from Lebanon, Chilean Claudio Martinez and Americans David Clay and Luz Gaxiola made up the troupe of performers.

In a world of tight budgets that struggle to meet the overwhelming needs of the more than 2.7 million Syrian refugees across the Middle East, some question the value of laughter and clowning around.

Others, however, think cracking a smile and breaking into a full-throated laugh is an important part of healing.

"Is clowning worthwhile? Should we spend money on clowning? I look at the show today�and I, you know, yes, this is a form of relief work, this is a good thing. I know that we are helping kids. I have been in hospitals where children were so shocked in the head, they couldn't speak, they wouldn't react to anything. We came, we did stuff and for the first time they smile you know and everybody goes, "wooooh we couldn't get them to do that in two months and you guys came�five minutes," you know," says Clay.

"If you laugh you have all your muscles going "hiiiii" and then you feel more relaxed and then it's good for the heart, it's good for the mind, it's good for everything, it's good for the body, you feel you are more open, you are more accepting of the other," says Choucair.

And Bar Elias today the show is going down a treat with the children.

"Today was better than yesterday. Today there was a show. Yesterday, we just played football," says Bilal al-Sharqawi, a shy 10-year-old from Daraa, the city in southern city where the Syrian uprising was born.

And the adults are smiling too.

"We used to only hear the sound of missiles, and shelling and the war. Even now, we have fear. We still have fear in our hearts, and the fear needs to be expelled from our hearts. We need festivals like this one to push the fear from our hearts and minds," says Amina Umm Said, a 40 year-old Syrian Palestinian.

When the clowns finish the show and try to pack up, the children demand that they join them in an impromptu dance.

One day at least of happy memories for Syria's refugee children.