Philippe Gaulier has had a huge influence on theater – but his lesson to ’embrace the absurd’ is a lesson for us all platform

WWhen I was starting out as a theater maker, back in the millennium, there were three ways (or so we thought) you could educate yourself in the trade. If you want to be taken seriously and say a lot of words, a drama school in the UK is your bag. If you want to make theater with your body, the Jacques Lecoq School in Paris has invited you. And if you wanted to perform with all your heart, shared innocence and transcendent foolishness, you went to the school of Philippe Gaulier. That’s what my friend Alex Murdoch did, and she came back with a set of his teachings (on clowning and much more) that we used in theater for the next 17 years.

At the time, few knew, even though the process was already underway, that Gaulier – who has died aged 82 – would become a bigger name in comedy than in theatrical training. This was much to the great man’s disgust. “I hate stand-up comedy,” he growled at me when I interviewed him a decade ago. “I would never teach something so terrible.” And he didn’t do that. But he taught the audience the skills of playfulness and alertness; To be visibly alive in the moment; Celebrating your silliness – which is what makes stand-up comedians and clowns so much better at their jobs. In its later years, “Training by Juliet” became a must-see for dozens of comedies, especially those who wanted to join the exciting boom in innovative clown comedy that has lit up the circuit of late.

The list of his students and collaborators is long and illustrious, and includes Sacha Baron Cohen (whom he described as “the funniest man I ever met”), Emma Thompson, Helena Bonham Carter, and Roberto Benigni. More recently, the clown’s new grandfather, Phil Burgers, has appeared alongside hit performers such as Julia Masley, Damien Warren-Smith (from the West End hit Garry Starr: Classic Penguins) and Britain’s Got Talent champion Viggo Venn.

Gaulier and his philosophies have had an immeasurably exhilarating influence on this field of comedy that overlaps with theatre, giving rise to a generation of comedians who are not just TV presenters or talking heads in waiting, but who make their work on a limb, in open dialogue with whoever is in the audience on the night, brimming with (often devious) pleasure just from standing on stage.

Like most great teaching methods, Gaulier’s method was an instruction for life as well as for performances. In his life, fun and lack of self-seriousness were key. We’re all silly. Juliet taught his students to stop hiding it—in fact, to rejoice in it, because the specific ways in which we are silly may be precisely what makes us special and engaging onstage (and off?). And to have an entire audience looking at you and commenting on every word you say? How lucky you are! Don’t waste it, and don’t you dare be boring or predictable, which is the worst form of ingratitude. If that happened, his former students would find themselves for years afterward haunted by a hoarse, French-accented voice in their heads. “This is boring. Eet ees very shit!“

None of this is to say that the skills in which Joliet trained don’t lend themselves to serious theater as well: his alumni include Kathryn Hunter, Rachel Weisz, and Oscar-winner Geoffrey Rush. But even a dramatic actor can bring to their performance—as the best actors do—a sense of excellence and pleasure because what they are doing, in fact, is just playing someone else’s part. Juliet certainly never forgot that the whole thing, both life and theatre, was a big game—and that because he taught so many how to play it most cheerfully, it will remain long and warm in the memory.