Goofing

Goofing is a weekend intensive in clown and solo improvisation built on The Goof Method — a pedagogy rooted in the teachings of Jacques Lecoq and Philippe Gaulier, sharpened through years of teaching, riffing, and flopping in front of live audiences. It draws on Idiot Work and contemporary solo improv, and carries those traditions forward with a modern, present-tense energy.

At its core, Goofing is about presence over performance — riffing live with an audience, with nothing planned, reading the room, responding in real time, and letting laughter come from honesty and play rather than preparation.

And central to all of it is the art of the flop.

We fail — often, and publicly. But we make a distinction that matters: there’s honest failure, the kind that happens when you genuinely don’t know what’s coming next, and there’s performed failure — the preemptive apology, the self-deprecating armour, the safety of acting like you don’t care. The work is to dismantle the second one so the first one can do its job. Honest failure is where the laugh lives.

This is also where the work extends beyond the stage. Most of us spend our lives avoiding looking foolish — performing competence, dodging risk, staying safe. Goofing is a controlled environment to practice the opposite. Think of it as rejection therapy with laughs: you walk in afraid of looking stupid, and over the weekend you discover that looking stupid is survivable, freeing, and often the funniest thing in the room.

People leave with a different relationship to failure — and that shows up everywhere, not just on a stage.

Whether you’re an actor sharpening instincts, a writer hunting material, a comedian testing premises, or someone who’s never performed in their life and just wants to get out of their own way — there’s a way in.