Philippe Gaulier

Early life and education

Gaulier was born in occupied Paris in 1943 to a doctor, his father, and a Spanish woman, his mother. He has called his father "a bourgeois idiot," and described himself as "the rebel" of his family. He grew up near a circus. At 8 years old he was kicked out of school for punching his gymnastics teacher; he has stated that he does not regret this as the instructor made students march as though they were in the army. Gaulier studied under Jean Vilar and Alain Cuny as a member of the Théâtre National Populaire. He had an ambition to be a tragic actor, but says he was laughed at every time he attempted to do serious work in drama school. He then began a class with Jacques Lecoq who trained him in clowning, improvisation and mask work.

Early career

Throughout the 1970's, Gaulier had a famous clown act with Pierre Byland, which they performed extensively in Paris at the Odéon Théâtre de l'Europe and toured internationally. One clown show in particular, Les Assiettes, in which Gaulier and Byland broke 200 plates every night became a legendary hit in Paris. Gaulier directed the show in collaboration with Roger Blin, director of the original productions of Waiting for Godot and Endgame by Samuel Beckett.

École Philippe Gaulier

Gaulier left Lecoq in 1980, and set up his own clown school, the École Philippe Gaulier, in Paris. In 1991, Arts Council of England invited Gaulier to move the École Philippe Gaulier to London, in the neighborhood of Cricklewood, in the United Kingdom, where it was based for eleven years until 2002. Sacha Baron Cohen attended the school around 1996. After Lecoq's death in 1999, Gaulier's reputation grew larger as his school continued to take students.

In 2005, the school reopened back in Sceaux, Hauts-de-Seine, until 2011, when it moved again, this time to Étampes, where it opened in summer 2011. Organized by Small Nose Productions, Philippe returns to the UK once a year to run workshops at Trestle Arts Base in St Albans, Herts. At the school Gaulier taught classes in 'le jeu,' clown, bouffon, Shakespeare, Chekhov, Molière, Feydeau, melodrama, mask play, neutral mask, Greek tragedy, characters, Commedia dell'arte, and vaudeville. Gaulier always specified he offered training in theatre and not comedy.

The BBC show Newsnight covered Gaulier in 2015. In 2015, Rachel Weisz credited her Gaulier training as an influence on her performance in the Yorgos Lanthimos film The Lobster. That same year, Cal McCrystal reported to the BBC that he, "knew of no greater performance teacher ever." In 2016 The Guardian reported that "'Gaulier-trained' [was] a buzzword on many a comic’s publicity." The school temporarily closed for the COVID-19 pandemic, and reopened in autumn 2020 for a delayed 40th anniversary in 2021. The New York Times reported in 2022 that Gaulier's "stature has grown in recent years."

In 2022, Hillary Clinton and daughter Chelsea Clinton traveled to Paris and interviewed Gaulier for their Apple TV+ series Gutsy.

, Gaulier has begun to teach fewer classes and travel less, having considered retirement, a prospect he said he had no plans for in 2020.

In 2023, Gaulier retired from teaching regularly. Classes at the school are now taught by his assistants, whom he trained and are graduates of the school.

Pedagogy

In Gaulier's view of performance, the performer must feel pleasure to be performing, having "complicité" (the art of being present and connected with your audience or partner). Pillars in Gaulier's teaching are 'humanity, complicité, and play.' By humanity, Gaulier means 'a light delicacy, vulnerability, and an almost childlike openness that reveals our fears and tenderness.' His methodology of teaching is designed to allow students to develop their own strengths, following specific principles but no defined method. He does not emphasize technique or physical virtuosity, and suggests these traits in a performer will become boring, unexciting, and disconnecting to an audience. Gaulier much preferred to see students find their complicité on stage through failure, fear, and panic, rather than assured technique. In this sense he tries not to leave his own mark on his students, stating that he "hate[d] the idea of lots of little Gauliers going out into the world." This approach notably differs from that of his teacher, the famous late master bouffon Jacques Lecoq, who is seen by some as a guru of modern movement-based theatre. "You can always tell a Lecoq student," Gaulier stated in 2001. "Too much emphasis on image." Gaulier was much more interested in impulse than movement analysis. However, both Gaulier and Lecoq stressed the importance of a performer's unique, individualistic connection with their audience. To Gaulier the essence of clowning is to "find your idiot." He additionally tells his students to wear red noses because, he says, "when a student puts one on, I see better how he was when he was a child." Gaulier has been critical of different drama theorists including Stanislavski and Grotowsky, writing, "We want to see actors enjoying themselves. We are not interested that you just buried your grandmother."

Gaulier has a 'legendarily terrifying teaching style.' Utilizing a direct method of communication to his students, he teaches via negativa, and is known for his intentionally insulting feedback. Former student John Wright of theatre company Told by An Idiot has described his teaching as "open-heart surgery without anaesthetic." Gaulier has said himself that he directly tells underperforming students that they should not be actors, giving them a choice between changing or leaving his school. This has equally received praise from his students; Sacha Baron Cohen described him in 2001 as "brutally honest," but also said that he "was so lacking in pretension that he made acting what it should be, which is fun." A Facebook group called "Philippe Gaulier Hit Me With a Stick" collected instances of these insults, including "you sound like overcooked spaghetti in a pressure cooker,” and “you are a very good clown for my grandmother." These insults have been described as being able to dismantle the students' egotism, and as helping to build character.

In 2020, after meeting several of Gaulier's former women students who did not think they were good, Gaulier's former student turned clown teacher Deanna Fleysher wrote that his style did not work for many people, especially those who are marginalised and women, and that it was "macho, abusive, bootcamp-style sadism befitting frat houses and old-school military training." Gaulier has since rejected this, and argued that his teaching works equally well with women, his criticism is "a game between the teacher and the student," and that his classes were still full. Others have praised Gaulier's for playing a "demon" character in his classes. Arab Muslim actor Randa Sayed said that in one lesson he told her to "Get off [stage] you Muslim slut"; she said that he did this in recognition of and to externalise the risks and dangers she would face as a Muslim performer, and that she had "never experienced more love from any teacher than Gaulier". He has said that "now we have to be politically correct but I’ve never been politically correct. I love to say horrible things – I get that from my mother. She was from Spain and the Spanish have a black humour. They say 'fuck you' to many people, the Spanish."

Alumni

Graduates have gone on to receive multiple Academy Awards, Emmy Awards, Tony Awards, BAFTA Awards, Golden Globe Awards, SAG Awards, European Film Awards, César Awards, Olivier Awards, David di Donatello Awards, AACTA Awards, Lumière Awards, Goya Awards, Magritte Awards, Nastro d'Argento, Molière Awards, and Evening Standard Awards. As well as top prizes at the Cannes Film Festival, Venice Film Festival, and the Berlinale.

Alumni include:

• Khalid Abdalla, actor
• Dominique Abel, film director
• Annabel Arden, theatre and opera director and Complicité co-founder
• Mathew Baynton, actor
• René Bazinet, clown, mime and actor
• Roberto Benigni, actor, comedian, screenwriter and director
• Orla Brady, actor
• Louise Brealey, actor
• Phil Burgers, comedian
• Helena Bonham Carter, actor
• Hayley Carmichael, actor and Told by an Idiot co-founder
• Sacha Baron Cohen, comedian
• Eric Davis (Red Bastard), clown
• Simon Dormandy, theatre director
• Alexis Dubus, comedian
• Mark Feuerstein, actor
• Sean Foley, director, comedian and half of troupe The Right Size
• Kura Forrester, comedian and actress
• Julia Garner, actress
• Josh Glanc, comedian
• Fiona Gordon, film director and Complicité co-founder
• Kathryn Hunter, actor
• Mark Ivanir, actor and Gesher Theatre co-founder
• Elf Lyons, comedian
• Marcello Magni, Complicité co-founder
• Julia Masli, clown
• Simon McBurney, actor, writer, director and Complicité co-founder
• Hamish McColl, comedian, actor and half of troupe The Right Size
• Cal McCrystal, director and actor
• Miriama McDowell, actress, theatre director
• Siobhan McSweeney, actress
• Yolande Moreau, actress and filmmaker
• Nina Nawalowalo, theatre director
• Eryn Jean Norvill, actor
• Natalie Palamides, comedian
• Alisa Palmer, director of National Theatre School of Canada
• Sally Phillips, actor, comedian, television presenter
• Carmen Pieraccini, actor and clown
• John-Luke Roberts, stand-up comedian, writer, actor
• Luke Rollason, actor and physical comedian
• Geoffrey Rush, actor
• Shubham Saraf, actor
• Simon Scardifield, actor and playwright
• David Schwimmer, actor
• Samantha Scott, director
• Teresa Saponangelo, actress
• Lorna Rose Treen, comedian
• Viggo Venn, comedian
• Emma Vilarasau, actress
• Tom Walker, comedian
• Rachel Weisz, actor
• Erica Whyman, deputy artistic director at the Royal Shakespeare Company
• Emily Woof, actress and author
• Zach Zucker, comedian

Personal life

Gaulier is married to Michiko Miyazaki Gaulier, a former student and colleague.

Alain Gheerbrant, Françoise Marthouret, and Sacha Baron Cohen have all written prefaces to Gaulier's books.

In popular culture

Zach Galifianakis has stated that Gaulier and his school inspired his TV show Baskets.

Hillary Clinton and Chelsea Clinton interviewed Gaulier for the first episode of their Apple TV+ Series, Gutsy. In the episode, Hillary Clinton also participated in a clown class. Videos of Clinton interviewing Gaulier went viral on social media.

References

Sources

• Theatre school Philippe Gaulier
• Universitat Der Kunste Berlin - Philippe Gaulier

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