Eamon O'Connor

But at the same time, parts of Syria are still violent.

There was fighting this month in and around Aleppo.

Over 150,000 people were displaced.

In July, Sharif had to cancel a show in a city called Soweta because of a massacre there.

800 people were killed.

And then in October,

In the middle of this chaos and hope, Sharif and the other comedians in his comedy group, the group is called Styria, decided to go on tour.

They planned 16 cities in 21 days all over Syria, in conservative regions, in liberal areas like Damascus, areas under Kurdish control, and areas that were once under ISIS control.

And they really weren't sure how this was going to go.

Nobody had ever done this.

And this is the tricky part.

Under the dictator, it was clear what they could not say on stage.

But now there seemed to be no rule book at all.

If anything, the new government was saying, go ahead.

You can make jokes about us.

We're different from the old regime.

But the comedians didn't know if they could trust that.

And then beyond that, there are lots of just very conservative, very religious people around Syria.

Some of them are figures of authority in towns and provinces.

The comedians wondered how they would react to things that they heard on stage.