At a clown school near Paris, failure is the lesson

"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 Ecole 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 Etampes, about an hour's train ride south of Paris."

"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."

Ecole Philippe Gaulier in Etampes trains actors, doctors and priests from around the world in clowning rooted in embracing ridiculousness rather than punchlines. The pedagogy centers on discovering each performer's personal 'idiot' through exercises, ritualized stage games and rigorous critique. Teachers like Carlo Jacucci lead sessions where deliberate failure, embodied as 'le flop,' is confronted and mined for humor. Philippe Gaulier retired after a 2023 stroke, but the school's system endures through teachers he trained. Students perform in character costumes, endure awkward silences and are coached to transform shame and dead air into comic vitality.

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