The time has finally come.

“What time?” you ask with flippant indifference combined with mild interest.

About… oh… 11 months ago, I signed up for Gaulier.

Gaulier, if you don’t know, is one of the biggest clown teachers in the world. Well, I don’t think he’s that big. Could be shorter than me. But he’s big metaphorically.

Of course, everything could be big metaphorically, couldn’t it? I could say “That’s a big ant.” Is that metaphorically? Or relatively big? Relative to other ants that is.

In any case, it doesn’t matter. Gaulier is THE clown teacher you go to when you want to be taught in clown.

He’s a harsh, wheezing French man who is well known for making students cry and being generally a lot more brusque and brutally honest than most teachers you’d find in the world of performance… where, let’s not forget, the type of student (actors) are often quite sensitive.

Did I choose to go to Gaulier for the kudos? Because my ego wants to say “I’m Gaulier trained?”

A bit.

But it’s also a challenge. And an opportunity that won’t be round for long, I guess.

Gaulier is pretty old. He’s in his late 70s I think. He drinks, he smokes (I hear), he has asthma… and Covid doesn’t seem to have killed him off.

My dad and I were going to go to a short course with him in 2020, which was delayed then cancelled due to the pandemic.

Then the Gaulier school started running intensive summer courses, instead of the 6 month or year long courses that were usually required.

And I thought: Well, if he doesn’t get killed off by Covid first, I’d better do this training now because otherwise he might die and I won’t be able to.

I’ve already lost the opportunity to work with one teacher over the course of Covid.

The voice teacher Kristin Linklater, who ran residential courses in Orkney, died last year, I think. So, while the school still exists, I can’t be taught by her.

But another reason for wanting to do Gaulier is the fear and the brutal honesty.

I watched the film Whiplash a while back and was worried about it for days afterwards. The teacher character in that is horrible. But he does it with the aim to pushing the perfect performance out of his students.

And I’ve never had that really.

Most of the teachers I’ve had have either been encouraging and understanding… or (in my view at least) incompetent.

I can’t think of a teacher that really pushed me to work harder and who I also respected. Some music teachers, a bit – David Crisp and Neil Beaumont come to mind. But in general I’ve had a good ride… or a bad ride, depending on your point of view.

I think I’m pretty good at most of the things I do. I have a high opinion of my own sense of “good” and my abilities to achieve things… if I assert myself to do them fully… which I rarely do.

When you have such a big ego as I seem to have, it’s hard to get those moments that some other people have in their lives when a teacher or other authority figure said to them “You will do great things if you just stop messing around and assert yourself.”

I can only remember one such occasion in my life, which I’ve spoken about elsewhere so won’t repeat now.

So this is an opportunity to go and learn from someone who is known for pushing students to get better and who is, objectively, a good clown teacher given the huge number of well-known performers (who are people that I admire) that have been taught by him.

I leave for France early tomorrow.

My plan is to write about my experiences as they happen.

Will that happen? Who knows. We’ll see. I’m not promising anything, because this blog is not about strict publishing schedules… I have enough of that in the rest of my work.

All I can say is that I’ll be doing clowning over the next 6 weeks. And, if you’re lucky (or unlucky depending on your perspective) I’ll write about my learnings here.

Or I might just write about nonsense.

Who knows?

Certainly not me.