Obituary of Philippe Juliet | Clowns

In 1980, the École Philippe Juliet opened its doors in Paris to help performers find and celebrate their “inner fool.” The school quickly became a major destination for clown training, attracting theater students, actors and other curious people from around the world.

Philip, who died aged 82 after suffering a lung infection, came up with the idea The game – He plays – Central to his teaching. For him, comedy was not about jokes, but danger: the moment when a performer risks failure or ridicule in the pursuit of delight. His clowns were not sentimental innocents, but mischievous creatures who loved the public and longed to be loved in return.

It was just as celebrated Buffon – A grotesque form of satire in which performers mock authority and hypocrisy. Buffon are society’s brutal but hilarious critics, generating shocking laughter from the darkest material. There were also courses in melodrama, Shakespeare, Chekhov, the neutral mask, tragedy and vaudeville.

It wouldn’t occur to Philip to claim credit for the success of alumni including Sacha Baron Cohen, Emma Thompson, Helena Bonham Carter, Simone McBurney, Katherine Hunter, Roberto Benigni, David Schwimmer, Geoffrey Rush and members of British comedy and the alternative theater boom of the 1990s and 2000s. “They were really talented,” he insisted. “I only told them when they were lying.”

When his name is mentioned, a common response is: “Oh, I heard he’s really mean.” I never found this to be the case, although he was upfront about the effect. Philip no doubt entertained himself by hurling witty insults at the students, but they were useful in stripping away the ego to achieve a humility more suitable for slapstick. Former students will proudly list the politically incorrect abuse they suffered.

In games like “Balthazar said so“, a version of Simon Says Named after his eldest son, Philip often enjoyed finding fault so he could mete out ‘punishments’. Light spankings and hair-pulling were typical. Most students enjoyed it and understood the intended effect; some were horrified.

In the summer of 1988, he gave a clown training course at the Ivy House in Golders Green, north London, where I felt my life had changed. Everything he was scolded for at drama school, he seemed to like.

In 1991 the Arts Council of England invited him to move his school to London. Philip, his wife – Iranian actress Soussan Farrokhnia, whom he married in 1987 – and two sons moved into a house in Hampstead. The Gulers were hospitable. The wine flowed and I spent unforgettable evenings there. At this time, the school was based in Highbury, moving three years later to Kentish Town and then, in 1999, to a disused, rat-infested church in Cricklewood.

Philippe returned to France in 2002 when his marriage ended, and a new residence was hastily purchased in the northern Paris suburb of Montreuil. Three years later, the school moved to the southern suburb of Scow and flourished there until 2011 despite Philip’s difficulties with the local authority: “The people who work at the city council would make you cry with despair.”

Then transferred to Etampes, 45 minutes south of Paris. Philip continued to teach until a few months ago, and is still going strong under the supervision of Michiko Miyazaki-Julie, his wife since 2005, and the teaching staff.

Philippe was born in Paris during the Nazi war, the son of Jacqueline Everling, from Spain, and André Juliet, a general practitioner. By his own account, he was stubborn and was eventually expelled from his elementary school because he punched his gymnastics teacher, “for making us march like soldiers.” School staff repeatedly beat him for his stubbornness, and he claimed to have the name Philippe, echoing the name of the collaborationist leader of the French Vichy government, Marshal Philippe Pétain.

The student said that this repression made him like to pretend to be someone else. As a teenager he tried acting, but audiences laughed at him in serious roles. So he found his way to study with Jacques Lecoq at his mime school in Paris. There he was taught by Pierre Belland, with whom he later created the clown show Les Assiettes, in which the pair broke 200 boards each night. They have played extensively at the Odéon Théâtre de l’Europe in Paris and toured internationally.

The show was happily received everywhere except Belgium, where they played in silence. According to Philippe, many Belgians were gathering at the stage door to ask: “Why did you break all those paintings?”

He taught clowning at Lecoq for several years before leaving to found a school bearing his name, with financial assistance from pediatrician Françoise Dolto and actress Madeleine Milhaud, wife of composer Darius Milhaud.

A prolific writer, Philip would wake up at 4 a.m. every day to work at his desk until it was time to teach. His published works include Le Gégèneur (The Tormentor: My Thoughts on Theater, 2007); Lettre Ou Pas Lettre (2008), Reflections on teaching from the starting point of calligraphy; and Le Gauche et le Droit, the story of a pair of identical twins, a doctor and a “madman” (also 2008). His collection of plays, Pièces pour Bouffons, includes his most famous work, No Son of Mine.

He is survived by Michiko, his sons Balthazar and Samuel, his grandchildren Gladnis and Solomon, and his siblings Nicole, Martin, Michel and Frederic. His sister Claudine predeceased him.