Boooorrriinng!!!

Once you find your true character, you'll be able to find pleasure in the performance itself, in the work itself. A leader who feels pleasure gives off a sense of heightened energy. And to that end, Gaulier teaches serious professionals how to play the clown.

The clown is the most complicit character. It is the slightly fumbling aristocrat, the person dancing like a fool at the edge of all risk. The clown is the character who engages our sympathies, who speaks for us, who says and does the unspeakable, the undoable -- and, in doing so, becomes a lightning rod for our emotions.

Gaulier looks for the clown in all of his students. And he knows just where to find it: It's usually the part that people play with the most seriousness. " This is the open-heart surgery part of the course," he says. " I can see people's souls, and I reveal them. That is the point of my classes. That's why you should be not boring but joyful -- so that others can see your soul."

Clowns play to the heart. They have nothing to lose, and so they have all of the freedom that they want. That is the pleasure to which others connect.

Performing your most serious characteristic as a clown lets you laugh at it. Once you are no longer attached to boring appearances -- once you stop taking yourself so damn seriously! -- you are free to act with pleasure. Clowns perform for an audience and don't care if people laugh at them. And because they don't care, they are free.

Send in Your Clown!

Gaulier is not finished with Ms. Too Nice. He turns to the class and says, " She would make a great Salvation Army clown." Under Gaulier's gaze, it's obvious what is wrong with this woman: her utter seriousness. She is playing " nice" as if she were Meryl Streep, rather than Meg Ryan. It's that seriousness that traps her. We stop listening when she speaks. We lean away from her. She does not capture us. It is a subtle but profound point: She undermines her own authority by playing the " nice" role with such utter unbreakable seriousness.

" The clown character allows you to show your greatest strength," says Gaulier. Play it, and you release the part of you that is too serious, too wrapped up in appearance, fear, self-consciousness, and old habits. " Often," he continues, " your most beloved role keeps you small. This woman should try playing Medea or Clytemnestra" [two furies of the stage whose anger runs wild]. Gaulier is not suggesting that Ms. Too Nice start stabbing people. He is suggesting that she play the part of the good guy not as the role of a lifetime but as a laughable Salvation Army clown. She is to play her serious side for laughs. That will give her pleasure. That will set her free. Says Gaulier: " She thinks of herself as a dancer -- graceful, light. But that ideal is not healthy. Her time to be a dancer is over."

Ms. Too Nice is about to learn how to laugh at her serious side. Once she does this, she will become more accessible to both herself and to others. Heroes have their own distinct humor. This woman is about to discover hers.

She begins acting the part of the clown. She starts dusting people off, wearing a big, stupid grin whenever she does something servile. Every gesture that she used to perform by rote, she now invests with thought. A smile is exaggerated. A nod is goofy. She starts enjoying herself: The role is giving her pleasure, and her seriousness is melting away. She is nice surprisingly. Later in the day, her caring role acquires a bit of an edge. Her nurturing gestures become less automatic, more subtle and thoughtful. When she defers to someone, she does it with a flourish, as if her doing so were a gift. The transformation is riveting. This woman has become larger.

" Make me wonderful," people say. What they really mean by that is " Don't change me." L'école Philippe Gaulier is a school for leaders: It makes people wonderful, and it changes them.

You walk through a tear in the curtain of reality when you come to study with Gaulier. It is the dimension of theater, and it's a bit unreal. L'école Philippe Gaulier stands out in the dark, dreary muck of London like something out of J.R.R. Tolkien's " The Hobbit," tucked away in the London suburb of Cricklewood. On the opening day of class, 26 people are running in from the drizzle, entering the converted church hall. Pagans? Hobbits? You can't be sure, not even when they introduce themselves as Philippe Gaulier's students.

They are students, but they are also teachers. On first impression, many of them seem riveting. They make eye contact. Their open faces draw you in. They fix themselves in your memory like a powerful movie character etched in time. How do they accomplish that with just a handshake and a hello? Pleasure. Complicity. Connection.