At a clown school near Paris, failure is the lesson

ÉTAMPES, France — The man in control tonight is named Carlo Jacucci. You’re on the stage. He’s the audience. And there’s almost no chance you’re going to please him — which, somehow, is exactly why you’re here.

“The games begin,” Jacucci, a matter-of-fact Franco-Italian, tells his students, then taps a drum between his legs.

The stage lights go bright. The music starts. A group of red-nosed clowns in various costumes begins a ritual that has been the heartbeat of this place for more than 40 years.

This is the École Philippe Gaulier, a school named after its founder, a teacher who believed comedy and clowning begin not with jokes, but with the pleasure of being ridiculous. Or, as Gaulier calls it, finding “your idiot.”

Doctors, priests, actors — they come from all over the world to study this philosophy in the otherwise sleepy village of Étampes, about an hour’s train ride south of Paris. The loudest noises after sundown come from a room full of English speakers learning to fall on their faces.

A stroke in 2023 forced Gaulier, now in his early 80s, to retire from teaching full time. But the school still runs on the system he built — carried on by the teachers he trained — shaping every exercise, every critique and nervous student hoping for a laugh.

Students like Brazilian actress Gabriela Flarys. She’s standing on the stage in an oversize frilly orange-and-white flamenco dress, prompting Jacucci to nickname her “orange broccoli.”

Flarys’ act is not going well. Her stage partners are a man dressed as a Roman warrior and another as a mariachi with an oversize sombrero. The premise involves a love triangle.

“Welcome everyone to the worst moment of the class,” Jacucci says flatly. “We reached it.”

The trio stares back at him. They’re confused. Ashamed.

The worst moment has a name here — le flop. It’s the part everyone dreads, when you can feel your red nose begin to droop as the dead air fills the room. But it’s also where the real work begins.

Jacucci singles out Flarys. She needs more emotion. He tells her to get angry at him. What happens next feels almost like an exorcism.

“Carlo!” she shrieks, shouting Jacucci’s first name. “I’m pissed off!”

She gets louder. And louder. Until something breaks loose. Then she calms down.

“Wait,” she tells the crowd, then picks up a shaving cream pie and throws it at the mariachi’s face.

The room laughs with her. Even Jacucci looks stunned.

“Me, I am shocked,” he says. “I didn’t know you could change.”

Painful but also refreshing

Teaching is Jacucci’s second act.

A longtime performer, he first came to Gaulier as a student decades ago. He says he found the experience painful — but also refreshing.

“[Gaulier] had no problem telling me the truth of what he saw,” he says.

“I felt immediately that this is a work that allows you to progress, because you face your limitations.”

Gaulier’s method has produced an unlikely list of alumni: including actors Rachel Weisz and Emma Thompson, both Oscar winners, and Helena Bonham Carter and Sacha Baron Cohen.

A new generation is also emerging.

A decade ago, Zach Zucker was working for Baron Cohen’s production company in Los Angeles when Gaulier came to town to do a workshop. Zucker signed up.

“And five minutes in, I saw Philippe work his magic, and I just could not believe what I was watching,” Zucker says.

Zucker had trained in American improv schools, including Second City and Upright Citizens Brigade. But this felt different. Other places teach you how to succeed. Gaulier, he says, was teaching people how to fail.

“Everyone’s good at being good,” Zucker says. “But if you can be good at being bad, then nothing is bad — and it’s actually more enjoyable.”

Zucker eventually moved to Étampes, where he studied under Gaulier for two years.

Today he is the ringmaster of Stamptown, a traveling vaudeville show that leans heavily into the Gaulier philosophy. His alter ego, Jack Tucker, repeatedly bombs on stage — and folds the failure into a part of the act.

It’s a schtick that’s catching on — the show will air its first Netflix special later this year.

Julia Masli signed up for the school a decade ago after learning there was no audition process.

“So straight away I signed up and that was basically my only education,” she says.

In her one-woman show, Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!, Masli invites the audience to share their problems, which she then helps solve in real time. The show became a breakout hit at the Edinburgh Fringe festival.

Despite her success, Masli admits she spent years struggling to get a laugh. Gaulier’s brutal training helped her prepare for that.

She remembers telling him she was from Estonia.

“He kept saying it’s a very gray country, and there’s no one funny there,” she recalls.

Masli quickly learned her teacher would never settle for anything less than brilliant.

The pleasure to be ridiculous

Gaulier was born in Nazi-occupied Paris in 1943. He trained to be a serious actor, but noticed that whenever he appeared on stage, audiences laughed.

Gaulier went on to study and later work with the mime teacher Jacques Lecoq. In 1980, Gaulier founded his own school, which has had stints in Paris, London, and for the past 15 years, in Étampes.

That doesn’t mean everyone is made for this work.

“This pleasure to be ridiculous … to have a special humor … it’s given to some people,” Gaulier told the BBC in 2015. “But not many.”

Michiko Miyazaki Gaulier, his wife and former student, now runs the school’s day-to-day operations, keeping the schedule — and the Gaulier method — on track. She promises everyone leaves with something.

“People come here to change,” she says. “Maybe they don’t know what — but they want to change.”

Back inside Jacucci’s classroom, students are still figuring out what that change looks like.

After class, Frank Benson, the Roman warrior, is still catching his breath.

“It was tough today,” says Benson, who came from Australia to study here. “Sometimes you go out there and it flops really hard, and it’s not so fun.”

But, he says, he’s getting used to it. The disappointment passes faster now.

In another corner of the room, Flarys, aka orange broccoli, is wiping the sweat off her face.

She has a confession: This is actually her third stint at the school. Even with over 15 years of experience performing, there’s something that keeps her coming back here.

What has she learned?

She says, “Nothing is a mistake if you play with it.”