Comedians, theatre-makers and actors including Rachel Weisz, Sally Phillips and Simon Munnery recall the late teacher’s alarming lessons

• Philippe Gaulier, clown guru, dies aged 82

Louise Brealey

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The Complicité founder remembers his teacher’s wicked laughter, provocative demands and infinite generosity

• Philippe Gaulier dies aged 82

Many speak of a teacher in their childhood who changed them, someone who reveals knowledge about the world they carry with them for the rest of their lives. I didn’t have one of those. It wasn’t until I was 24 and living in Paris, where I stumbled into Philippe’s class almost by accident, that this happened. Provocative, demanding, deliberately inappropriate and utterly hilarious, Philippe taught me not to carry anything. No baggage, no ideas; knowing nothing is all you need. Because we are all ridiculous.

His mother was Spanish, and we would eat her meals with relish when she came to cook for him, or rather with him, in his appartement lined with his writings, many of which had “ rêves ” inscribed on the spine. He would refer to his father as “ ce salaud bourgeois ” (that bourgeois arsehole) and he delighted in telling me the story of being thrown out of school aged eight because he punched the gymnastics teacher who was trying to instil discipline into young boys by turning them into military martinets.

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Linbury theatre, London
Glen Tetley’s landmark 1962 ballet, set to Schoenberg’s atonal score, is stark, strange and psychologically charged

Sometimes the revival of an old work can make it, and us, feel revitalised: if it speaks to the present, for example, or refreshes our sensibilities, or just because its artfulness endures. Other times it stays in the past, like a historical curiosity, a museum piece, even a relic. Glen Tetley’s 1962 Pierrot Lunaire, a pivot point in dance history , is an odd conjunction of these disparate aspects.

Drawing from commedia dell’arte iconography, it tells the stylised story of moonstruck innocent Pierrot (Marcelino Sambé), the awakening of his desire through an encounter with many-faced Columbine (Mayara Magri), and the intervention of the dominant, manipulative Brighella (Matthew Ball). The set is sparse – just a scaffold, centre stage – and the dance style is a bold, efficient alloy of the long, lean lines of classical ballet with the gravitational pull, tensed angles and visceral gesticulations of Martha Graham .

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The master clown helped generations of performers be more alive in the moment – and not take themselves too seriously. His teachings were for life as well as the stage

• Philippe Gaulier, clown guru and mentor to theatre and comedy greats, dies aged 82

When I was starting out as a theatre-maker, back in the last millennium, there were three ways (or so we thought) you could educate yourself in the trade. If you wanted to be taken seriously and say a lot of words, drama school in the UK was your bag. If you wanted to make theatre with your body, École Jacques Lecoq in Paris beckoned. And if you wanted to perform with your whole heart, shared innocence and transcendent idiocy, you went to École Philippe Gaulier. That’s what my pal Alex Murdoch did, and she returned with a suite of his teachings (about clowning and so much more than clowning) that the two of us made theatre with for the next 17 years.

Few knew back then, although the process was already under way, that Gaulier – who has died aged 82 – would go on to become a bigger name in comedy than in theatre training. This was much to the great man’s disgust. “I hate standup comedy,” he growled at me when I interviewed him a decade ago. “I would never teach something so horrible.” And nor did he. But he did teach skills – of playfulness and alertness to a crowd; of being vividly alive in the moment; of celebrating your own ridiculousness – that made standups, sketch comics and clowns much better at their jobs. In his later years, “Gaulier-trained” became a must-have imprimatur for scores of comic acts, particularly those wishing to join in the thrilling boom in innovative clown-comedy that has lit up the circuit in recent times.

Brian Logan is the Guardian’s comedy critic and the artistic director of A Play, a Pie and a Pint

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Teacher who ran school outside Paris was a formative influence on generations of comedians and actors including Helena Bonham Carter and Emma Thompson

Master clown Philippe Gaulier, the influential founder of France’s École Philippe Gaulier , has died aged 82. Gaulier taught the art of clowning for decades and his students included Sacha Baron Cohen, Helena Bonham Carter, Emma Thompson, Rachel Weisz and Geoffrey Rush.

Gaulier died on Monday due to complications from a lung infection. He had a stroke in 2023 and, since then, had “received warm words of encouragement from all over the world”, according to a statement made by his family. “He seemed especially happy to receive letters and messages from his former students. Teaching was his passion and purpose in life.”

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Summerhall, Edinburgh
In its aim to avoid big topics – politics, gender, climate – the Canadian pair’s superb show attempts an escape from contemporary chaos

If the end of the world is a party, I want these two feral slugs to be our hosts. Fever-dreamed by Canadian clowning duo Creepy Boys, this absurd existential rave is brilliantly smart and beautifully stupid.

Wriggling on to the stage in sleeping bags with puffy vulval gaps for their faces and arms, Sam Kruger and SE Grummett insist, with increasing desperation, that this is a show about nothing. No serious topic will be tackled here. Not gun violence, not climate change, not gender identity. Creepy Boys want to take those heavy, stressful “somethings” and stomp on them while we dance to techno and watch a soothing puppet show instead. When the eggshell-ridden world outside is so hard to navigate, don’t we deserve some smooth-brained blankness? Like slugs: the ultimate nothing.

At Summerhall, Edinburgh , until 25 August

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The ‘open space’ event will discuss the future of the form and use irreverence and play as a gateway to life’s big subjects

The world may be a pretty unfunny place at the moment and global leaders don’t seem to have the answers. But this weekend a different sort of talking shop will take place when a “clown congress” convenes in Bristol to discuss the role of the funny people in troubling times.

One of the leaders, Holly Stoppit, a clown therapist, teacher, and facilitator, summed it up succinctly: “Do you know what? I think there is no accident that the world is going to shit and who do they call? It’s the clowns.”

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They came out of the blue and electrified Edinburgh with absurdist takes on Americana. Now the US pair are doing all three hits back to back – and dreaming of not having to share a room

It’s a story to keep Edinburgh fringe dreams alive. On their own dime, Xhloe Rice and Natasha Roland rocked up at the festival in 2022 to try their luck. The US duo’s queer western clown show, And Then the Rodeo Burned Down , went from an audience of seven to winning a Fringe First award and selling out. They repeated both feats with another two-hander in 2023. And another in 2024. This summer, the best friends – who perform as Xhloe and Natasha – will stage all three prize winners in Edinburgh.

That is, if they can afford to get there. “We haven’t bought our flight tickets yet,” says Rice, highlighting the grim economic truth behind fringe success. “We have to wait until we make a bit more money.”

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