Philippe Gaulier obituary

French clown who established his own theatre school to teach actors and comics how to find their ‘inner idiot’

In 1980 the École Philippe Gaulier opened its doors in Paris to help performers find and celebrate their “inner idiot”. The school quickly became the prime destination for clown training, attracting theatre students, actors and curious others from around the world.

Philippe, who has died aged 82 following a lung infection, made the concept of le jeu – play – central to his teaching. For him, comedy was not about jokes but about danger: the moment when a performer risks failure or ridicule in pursuit of delight. His clowns were not sentimental innocents but mischievous creatures who loved the audience and longed to be loved in return.

He was equally celebrated for bouffon – a grotesque, satirical form in which performers mock power and hypocrisy. Bouffons are savage but playful critics of society, generating shocking laughter from the darkest material. There were also courses in melodrama, Shakespeare, Chekhov, neutral mask, tragedy and vaudeville.

It would not occur to Philippe to claim credit for the success of alumni including Sacha Baron Cohen, Emma Thompson, Helena Bonham Carter, Simon McBurney, Kathryn Hunter, Roberto Benigni, David Schwimmer, Geoffrey Rush and members of the British comedy and alternative theatre boom of the 1990s and 2000s. “They were talented already,” he insisted. “I only told them when they were lying.”

At the mention of his name, a common response would be: “Oh, I’ve heard he’s really mean.” I never found this to be the case, though he was blunt for effect. It undoubtedly amused Philippe to hurl witty insults at the students, but they were useful for stripping away ego to arrive at a humility more conducive to clowning. Ex-students will proudly list the politically incorrect abuse they had endured.

In games such as “Balthazar a dit”, a version of Simon Says named after his eldest son, Philippe often relished catching mistakes so he could mete out “punishments”. Mild thumping and hair pulling were typical. Most students enjoyed it and understood its intended effect; some were appalled.

In the summer of 1988 he gave a clown course at Ivy House in Golders Green, north London, and on it I felt my life change. Everything that I was scolded for at drama school, he seemed to like.

In 1991 Arts Council England invited him to relocate his school to London. Philippe, his wife – the Iranian actor Soussan Farrokhnia, whom he had married in 1987 – and two sons moved into a house in Hampstead. The Gauliers were hospitable; wine flowed and memorable evenings were spent there. At this time the school was based in Highbury, moving after three years to Kentish Town and then, in 1999, to a disused, mouse-infested church in Cricklewood.

Philippe returned to France in 2002 when his marriage ended, and a new premises was hastily acquired in the northern Paris suburb of Montreuil. Three years later the school moved to the southern suburb of Sceaux and flourished there until 2011 despite Philippe’s difficulties with the local authority: “The people working in the town hall would make you weep with despair.”

He then moved it to Étampes, 45 minutes south of Paris. Philippe continued to teach until a few months ago, and it is still going strong under the guidance of Michiko Miyazaki Gaulie, his wife since 2005, and their teaching staff.

Born in Nazi-occupied wartime Paris, Philippe was the son of Jacqueline Everling, from Spain, and André Gaulier, a GP. By his own account he was headstrong and was eventually expelled from his primary school for punching his gymnastics teacher, “for making us march around like soldiers”. The school staff beat him repeatedly for his stubbornness, and, he claimed, for bearing the name Philippe, echoing that of the collaborationist leader of Vichy France, Marshal Philippe Pétain.

The schoolboy said that this oppression gave him a love of pretending 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 Paris mime school. He was taught there by Pierre Byland, with whom he would later create the clown show Les Assiettes, where the pair of them broke 200 plates every night. They played extensively at the Odéon Théâtre de l’Europe in Paris and on tour internationally.

The show was joyously received everywhere except Belgium, where they played to silence. According to Philippe, many Belgians would gather at the stage door to ask: “Why did you break all those plates?”

He taught clowning at Lecoq for some years before leaving to establish the school bearing his own name, with financial assistance from the paediatrician Françoise Dolto and the actor Madeleine Milhaud, wife of the composer Darius Milhaud.

A prolific writer, Philippe rose at 4am each day to work at his desk until it was time to teach. His published works include Le Gégèneur (The Tormentor: My Thoughts on Theatre, 2007); Lettre Ou Pas Lettre (2008), reflections on teaching from a calligraphic point of departure; and Le Gauche et le Droit, a tale of a pair of identical twins, a doctor and a “madman” (also 2008). His collection of plays Pièces pour Bouffons includes his best-known work, No Son of Mine.

He is survived by Michiko, his sons, Balthazar and Samuel, grandchildren, Gladness and Soloman, and siblings Nicole, Martine, Michèlle and Frédéric; his sister Claudine predeceased him.

• Philippe Michel Gaulier, teacher of clowning, born 4 March 1943; died 9 February 2026