It’s my day off – the Sunday at the end of week 1 of Le Jeu at Gaulier.

My intention was to write a summary of the week… but what does that mean?

Should I write a beat by beat list of all the exercises we did throughout the week? That seems boring. Useful for me to remember the exercises later, sure… but it sounds boring to write and, let’s face it, boring for anyone reading this, including Future Alex… and you, whoever you are.

I just got back from a run. The thoughts playing out in my head as I ran were to do with teaching…

What is a teacher?

Whenever I go on a course or workshop, there are 2 Alex’s attending:

1. Alex the student – This is the Me who is trying to improve my own performance and clowning skills here in Etampes. The Me who felt important and capable when I got to copy the sound of a car crash and give a “revolutionary speech” on stage on Friday. And the same Me who felt incapable and invisible when I didn’t get to imitate an Arabic singer on stage on Saturday, after I began singing by “moving my hands in an unartistic way.” (or words to that effect). This is the Me who is taking this course in the manner that, I think, most students are.
2. Alex the teacher/coach – This is the Me who is always looking at the way that a good teacher teaches, to learn how to teach better myself. This Me provides a bit of armour against criticism. It is the voice that says “Yes, I Student Alex feels bad about being cut off because “I am boring.” but let’s work out didactically why the teacher did that.” I am not the only student here who has this voice. A few other students are also teachers and facilitators.

One thing Teacher Alex has noticed this week is how powerful it can be when the student doesn’t know what’s going on.

One of Gaulier’s great strengths as a teacher, I think, is keeping you on a tightrope.

Of keeping you walking that minutely thin tightrope between the 2 opposing feelings of:

• “I have no idea what’s going on, what’s wanted from me, or whether I’m even good enough to be here.”
• “Aha! I think I understand a little bit now.”

This is an uncomfortable tightrope to walk as a student.

But it is, I think, an extremely complex tightrope to create as a teacher.

When I’m coaching people in presentations, I’m nowhere near that skilled a teacher to be able to create such a tightrope.

My tendency – and this is informed by some of the teachers who have taught me – is to overexplain. To make sure the student understands what they need to do and, importantly, why they need to do it.

Gaulier dispenses with such explanation most of the time.

In the first 3 days of the course, he explained almost nothing as to what he was looking for. But on day 4 onwards, he started to pepper his “insults” (always remember, the insults are just a game) with hints of explanations…

But instead of explaining by lecturing us at length in the “what, why and wherefore” of the lesson… he almost always turns the question back on the audience, on us students. So that we learn, little by little, to tell for ourselves when the performer is boring and when they aren’t.

From the soup of confusion that Gaulier created in the first few days, I feel like we’re starting to see a little bit of clarity.

Not as the performer on stage.

When you’re on stage – at least in this first week – I feel like we’re still bumbling around in the dark most of the time.

But in the audience, Gaulier trains us to see when something is really boring – when the performer has no pleasure in what they are doing. He teachers us to denounce our fellow classmates when we feel even a tiny bit bored.

Yesterday, I “made the leap” during one of the movement exercises in the morning ( that’s the class without Gaulier).

The game was a type of dodgeball:

1. Someone throws a ball and calls your name.
2. You, and only you, have to run to catch the ball.
3. You stop, take one step, then throw it at someone else.
4. If it hits them, they are out. If they catch it, you are out.
5. Anyone in the room, at any time, can “feel the impulse” and start to do “something” (a scene, a monologue, whatever). You perform your “bit”, find a conclusion, and the game continues.

And I did this little monologue to one of the other classmates.

And my monologue went okay, I felt. Admittedly, it started to wane towards the end as I didn’t know how to finish it.

As I was speaking, a loud shout came from over the other side of the room “Boring!” and another classmate did her best impression of Philippe Gaulier, saying how boring I was as an actor.

And two conflicting reactions hit me at the same time:

1. Despondency. Like an arrow through the heart that I had “given my all” in this monologue and felt it was one of the best things I’d done so far. And it had just been “dismissed” as boring.
2. Joy at her funny impression, while being impressed by the power she had spoken with to immediately pull everyone’s attention to the other side of the room, and thankful that she had found a good way to finish my “bit” when I had been struggling to know how to end it.

Philippe wasn’t in the room, but his teaching was.

Which is, I think, part of the “process” here.

Gaulier, I reckon, doesn’t want us to have to turn to him every time we want to find out if what we do is good or not.

As a good teacher, he wants to furnish us with the skills to find out what’s good for ourselves.

We all know when we’re bored.

This approach is, I think, actually quite rare in a world where a teacher’s ego can often make them think they know everything. Endlessly kowtowing to a teacher’s ego and expertise is perhaps why gurus exist – where the students just end up as mindless sheep.

I read a good quote the other day from schoolteacher and suffragist, Alice Moore Hubbard, on how people learn:

“Teaching is successful only as it causes people to think for themselves. What the teacher thinks matters little; what he makes the child think matters much.”

Maybe that’s it.

Maybe that’s partly why Gaulier is such a revered teacher. And why there are so few teachers like him.

Because a teacher needs a ridiculously high amount of skill to create that individual tightrope for everyone in a class of 30-35 students simultaneously.

So this week, I now end it feeling I have some understanding of what’s going on.

We all know what that means…

It means that next week, Philippe and his teachings will pull the rug out from beneath me again…

And I’ll be back to not having a clue what’s going on or what is wanted from me.

I look forward to it.

And, of course, am also afraid of it.

Which is how it should be.