Philippe Gaulier (born in Paris, 4 March 1943) is founder of École Philippe Gaulier, a theatre school located in Sceaux, near Paris. He trained with Jacques Lecoq from 1965 - 67. Then became a teacher at École Jacques Lecoq from 1976 - 80. Gaulier is also a playwright and has worked as a clown and theatre director. He has published a book The Tormentor (Le Gégèneur) which outlines his thoughts on the theatre, as well as giving many theatre exercises.
Gaulier is notable for his work in the areas of Clown and Bouffon. Gaulier is generally recognized as the world's leading teacher in Bouffon, an art form which he holds as a sort of inverted Clown, where a balance is struck between grotesqueness and charm.
Gaulier teaches le jeu and clown all over the world.
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According to Gaulier, Bouffon is an art form which originated with the 'Ugly People' of France during the French Renaissance. Gaulier said excessively ugly people, lepers, and those with disfiguring scars or deformities were "banished to the swamp." The exception was during festivals, when the bouffon (or ugly people) were expected to entertain the 'beautiful people'.
During these performances, the bouffon's goal was to get away with insulting or disgusting the beautiful people as much as possible. Typically, the bouffon would target their attack on the leaders within the mainstream of society, such as the government or the Roman Catholic Church.
The ideal performance for a bouffon would be one where the audience is wildly entertained, and then go home, realize their lives are meaningless, and commit suicide. This of course is a theoretical ideal instead of an anticipated outcome.
His teachings, similar to Lecoq, work on a 'Via Negativa' approach wherein he encourages students to find the most successful performance outcome for themselves, he does this by either saying 'no' or offering insults to performative suggestions that are put forward which are deemed 'rubbish' by Philippe.
Founded in 1980 in Paris, École Philippe Gaulier is a theatre school based around play or 'Le Jeu' being the core of making and performing theatre. The school teaches that acting is a child's game played with great pleasure and dexterity which speaks to the imagination of the audience.
In 1991, The Arts Council of England invited Gaulier to move his school to England. He accepted, and the school was based in England for eleven years. In 2002, the school returned to Paris. It was located in Sceaux between 2005 and 2011. Gaulier has built a new school building in Étampes which opened there in summer 2011. Former students at the school include the theatre director Simon McBurney, whose company Theatre de Complicite has been influenced by Gaulier's work, and the actors Emma Thompson, Marcello Magni, Kathryn Hunter, Cal McCrystal and Sacha Baron Cohen.