Play, mask, clown, and theatrical performance
Life, work and teaching
Philippe Gaulier's teaching is represented by the international theatre school bearing his name in France. Its curriculum places play, theatrical pleasure, and contact with an audience within professional actor training.
The school calls its foundational course Le Jeu, or play. Its programme also includes neutral mask, Greek tragedy, melodrama, bouffon, clown, masked performance, and work on Shakespeare and Chekhov. Gaulier's contribution therefore extends across several forms of theatre and characterization.
The actor's study
A mask changes the actor's expressive conditions. Clown and bouffon bring their own relationships with spectators and theatrical convention. In this curriculum, an actor encounters those different demands through practical workshops, developing the ability to enter a form and discover its possibilities.
For your training, Gaulier's place in the library keeps pleasure and theatricality within serious craft. Follow the specific form being taught and the demands it makes on your presence, timing, body, and relationship with the room. The school's course descriptions provide an entrance to this teaching tradition.
