Clown at L'École Philippe Gaulier

Philippe Gaulier, founder, principal instructor, and all around guru of The Philippe Gaulier School, is the Dumbledore and Dr. House of the theatre.

The depth of his knowledge knows no ends; the man has been working for more than four decades and has taught and learned from some of the great artists of the 20th and 21st centuries. His former students include Emma Thompson, the founders of Chicago's 500 Clown Company, Sacha Baron Cohen, and countless other phenomenal practitioners of theatre arts. He is renowned as the best teacher of Clown and Bouffon in the world, and his faculty are brilliant (and incredibly limber).

However, Philippe Gaulier is also an asshole. He will not cure your ailment until he's insulted and ridiculed you and made everyone laugh at you for how "fuckeeng boreeng" or "fuckeeng idiote" you were.

Many of his exercises are designed to include an element of potentially huge embarrassment, and if they don't include embarrassment, the embarrassment comes when you receive your almost daily dose of scathing abuse.

On the first day we did one of his favorite exercises. We partnered into couples (there are twenty four of us in the class) and danced to whatever music Philippe chose to play from his iPod over the speaker system, and continued dancing until he saw someone look bored. He stopped the music.

"Which of you seenks your partner eez boreeng? Raise your and!"

Timidly, a few people raised their hands.

"Which of you seenks 'my partner eez like Adolf! My partner eez fascist! I want to kill my partner'?"

As we laughed, more people raised their hands and he began to single students out.

"You! You danced like you wanted a wheelchair!" he yelled at one girl. "It was awful. Awful."

"And you!" he pointed at me, "You dance like a gay man in one of zose gay clubs!" I started to consider taking this as a compliment since I think gay men generally move better than straight men until he brought it home with "eet was orreeble. Just so bad."

Philippe's insults very often demonstrate remarkable creativity. After a Portuguese girl performed an exercise, he posed the following question to the class:

"Does everyone ere know oo 'Salazar' was? Salazar? Salazar? No? Well years ago in Portugal zere was an orrible man named Salazar oo did orrible sings to peepul. Ee ad a secret police and zey would take peepul away in ze night and keel zem. Oo says 'Salazar's police did not keel enough; zey missed one'?" The point was taken.

Another one of Philippe's favorite exercises is his variation on "musical chairs" in which the person left out of a chair is given the chance to "save his/her life" by singing to everyone in a compelling and beautiful manner (while clearly having fun, the most important thing). After one student made a failed attempt to save her life, Philippe asked the rest of the class, "Do all of you know Pol Pot? Do you know oo Pol Pot was? No? Years ago zere was a man in Cambodge and ee did somesing orrible. But was what ee did nearly as orrible as what I just saw? NO!"

Philippe's working knowledge of genocidal dictators is impressive, and even more impressive is how frequently he draws on it when talking about poor performances. He also likes to compare quiet, powerless voices to a "leetle cat oo az lost iz balls and says [high voice] 'meow, meow, my balls, my balls!!'"

So how is it possible to learn anything from a man who so enjoys berating his students? How do I have fun? Well, honestly, his insults are usually hilarious, despite being sometimes borderline or full on racist and almost always really offensive, and personally, I find it refreshing to receive such horribly blunt criticism from a teacher, because that's something you pretty much never get in America, especially in the Arts. Part of what Philippe is teaching us is to laugh at ourselves and accept critiques without taking them personally, even if they're just incredibly harsh. And when he gives compliments, which is happening more and more frequently, they're very gratifying. "Not bad at all" is a good compliment from him, but to receive something like "you ad great fun, zere was a good complicité (I'll go into that)" is wonderful. And when he told one woman "zat was fantastic," we all clapped.

Classes are divided into two sections. The first hour and a half (2-3:30) is the movement/aerobics/acrobatics section, taught by Tomas, a Swiss-German dancer/acrobat/gymnast/unbelievably flexible and strong dude who is more sensitive than Philippe but is still very honest and quite a task master. For five or ten minutes we play games like six-square--like good old playground four-square only with six squares and one two-person team per square--or various "walk the space" theatrey things that make us run around and throw things to each other and jump and roll and generally just warm up. For the next forty-five minutes, Tom leads us through various stretches and aerobic exercises that loosen us up and make us sweat and tremble. He frequently introduces difficult stretches as "zis vun is a bit Nazi" or "zis vun is a Chinese-style exercise, so get ready, ya?" I've just accepted that in this place, things which people would consider "racist" or at least "culturally insensitive" aren't a big deal at all. At this point I know to expect pain whenever it's time for a Chinese stretch or exercise. Fair to the Chinese? Probably not. But hey, it is what it is. And for some reason the leg and back stretch we're supposed to do against a wall if we find ourselves in too much pain is called a "vegetarian cup." I don't know. It just is.

After we're all warm and loose, it's time for acrobatics. Day one we started working on handstands and headstands, and from there we've moved on to standing on people's shoulders, standing on people's hips, cartwheels, somersaults, backward somersaults, front flips, back flips, butt sits, airplanes, and handstands on chairs. The handstand is the building block of almost everything we do, so we work on them every day. I can do handstands and headstands against walls and against people, but getting up there on my own with no extra support still eludes me. However, I did successfully balance a chair handstand last week! That was one of the most incredible feelings I've ever had. Acrobatics has put my body in elements I've never experienced before and made my body do things I thought were impossible. The combination of mime, kung fu, and acrobatics is a phenomenal one and every day I find that something I did in one class helps me do something I'm doing in another. It's very exciting for me to see that so many physical limitations I thought I had are really psychological, and that through work, I can overcome them. It just takes work and patience and the humility to ask for help.

After Tom's class we have a fifteen minute break and then Philippe. We usually start Philippe's class with "Simon/Samuel Says" or the partner dancing kill boring people game, but lately it's mostly been Simon or Samuel Says. After we play the game for 45 seconds to a minute, Philippe stops and asks who has made an error. If you did something wrong, you have to ask for kisses from your classmates, however many you want, and if any of them say no, then you must walk to the front of the class to where Philippe stands, and he performs the torture ritual, where he grabs and twists your arm behind your back, then gives you a "French shampoo" which is just rubbing your hair, then "ze guillotine" with his hand, then "ze Guantanamo" which is him pushing your thumb down into your hand really hard. After one more round, we're usually done, but ONLY if he says "simon says ze game is over," otherwise all the students who prematurely moved to sit back down must line up against the wall to be either kissed or slapped by their more intelligent classmates.

Then, the exercises, which are really more games than exercises. All are geared towards establishing "complicité" or, complicity, with the scene partner, and having fun and sharing it with the audience. That is the basic thing of this school's philosophy, as can be seen in everything that Sacha Baron Cohen has ever done. Have fun, share it, and be willing to do anything. The complicity especially is huge. There needs to be connection with the scene partner. Or else, for all intents and purposes, you're alone. And if there's another person on stage but you're performing like you would if you were alone, ya look like a dumbass.

My two favorite exercises so far (partly because I got compliments from Philippe when I did them but mostly because I had lots of fun, which I guess is WHY I got compliments) were things we did last week. The first, which we did last Monday, was another complicité exercise, as well as a tool to work on "acting in major." Philippe talks a lot about how an actor can act in major or minor. An actor in major commands the stage and shares pleasure with all the spectators, while an actor in minor quietly and attentively listens and supports the actor in major. In this game, two actors walked to the stage. Each was given a scarf to tuck into the back of his/her pants like a tail, and the goal was to grab the other actor's scarf and keep your own. In playing the game there had to be complicité the whole time; the actors needed to be connected and grounded in each other's eyes and work off of each other without one person steamrolling the thing too much. Once an actor grabbed the other's scarf, it became his turn to act in major. He could sing a song, perform a poem, say nonsense syllables, pretty much do anything as long as it was compelling and fun. He also had to taunt his partner (who would play in minor) with the scarf until Philippe indicated that the partner could try to get the scarf back. If the partner got the scarf back, then it became his/her turn to play in major. I liked this game so much because it became incredibly physical. It's a sport. When I was done the first time, Philippe said "Zis one is a bit primative, no? But ee ad good complicité and ee was fun, wasn't he?" This felt awesome, even if he called me "primative" because I tended to try the same scarf-getting tactics again and again with lots of energy and not many new ideas. Then when I did it again later with another partner who was TONS of fun (my first one was fun too though don't worry) he said again "good complicité, and you ad great fun."

The second exercise I loved was the next day, when we mimicked our classmates. One person would take the stage and just truthfully respond to questions Philippe would ask, some vulgar, some almost mundane, others quite interesting. When an actor felt ready, he/she could go up and stand next to the subject and begin to mimic. I cried from laughter during this exercise! My classmates were so funny! I also had a ton of fun mimicking this Argentinian woman who speaks fluent French. She responded to Philippe in French, not English. Philippe and lots of others didn't know that I can speak French, so when I started mimicking her French with a correct accent, also trying to get a bit of her Argentinian accent in there, I got some good laughs, and I played up her physical mannerisms and just had fun. When I was done, Philippe said "Ze fun was good, yes. And where did you learn to speak French? You speak good French." I sat back down on the bench with the others, and he turned to me again and said "it was good." Then after class he came up to me and said "why do you speak French?" I told him that in school we were given the option to study French or Spanish starting in sixth grade, and I chose French because I thought it sounded nicer. Again, he told me "you speak good French, yes."

That was a great week. It was really gratifying to finally feel like I was internalizing and owning the lessons of this place; that is that to perform well, you MUST have fun, you must connect with your scene partner(s), and you must SHARE the fun! Also, to have him validate those things felt pretty damn nice.

A few days later he brought me back down, though. We were doing a Greek chorus exercise, in which one leader performs whatever movements he/she feels like performing to the music Philippe has selected, and four or 6 or 10 people behind him/her mimic the movements exactly. This way a spontaneous ensemble is created. Well my group was six ladies with me in the back. We didn't do so well. I didn't do so well.

Philippe, as usual, was ready.

"STOP! Zat was AWFUL!" He pointed at me. "You! You look like a terrorist oo az died and gone to Allah and received is 72 virgins but az NO idea what to do wis zem!"

You win some, you lose some. More often, he's Dr. House.