She's just clowning around in Davos

DAVOS, Switzerland – With an ear-piercing whistle, a professional clown in the crowd startles to order a conference room full of some of the world's elite thinkers, writers and religious minds.

That's why Sabine Choucair was invited to the Davos summit, quips a quick-witted panel moderator.

The Lebanese-born, curly-haired artist in baggy green trousers and with a frequent raspy laugh made her debut this week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

She was a special invitee more accustomed to entertaining refugees than livening up serious thought fests.

"They got in touch with me, and I was like 'Whoa, who are these people?' " said Choucair, on hand from Beirut, with a chuckle.

"I was like, 'Yeah, let me check if I'm available or not.' Then I looked, and I was like 'Oh my God, I have to come!' "

Choucair, a clown and storyteller, has often worked with refugee children in places like the Greek island of Lesbos. This time, however, wearing no particular get-up or red nose, she was working a different crowd — joking with world-class cellist Yo-Yo Ma in front of a bunch of well-heeled onlookers inside an entrance hall of the Davos Congress Center.

"I gave them one very, very silly game of, like, smiling ridiculously at each other, and talking about their first kiss, or a co-worker they don't like, or how do they like to eat their eggs? Just silly stuff," she said on Friday, the closing day of the WEF in Davos this year.

"People just played because they loved to play," she said, assenting that Davos attendees might have been expected to be a bit uptight.

"You know how we all have prejudices about things, but no. I think everybody wants to play."

"It was also an opportunity for me to really tell them about what I'm seeing, because at the end of the day, I'm the one on the ground working with the people," she said of the refugees she's seen.

Writer Grenville Byford, who attended the dinner featuring Choucair, said: "She's quite something."