David Gaines is an actor and director who specializes in movement, mask, improv, commedia, and clown. He is a graduate of the Ecole Jacques Lecoq in Paris, France.  After finishing the program, he formed The Moving Picture Mime Show - a very successful theatre company based in London that toured Europe and the world for 10 years. He was then invited to back to teach alongside M. Lecoq at the Ecole Lecoq as a professor of improvisation, mask, and movement.

Since leaving Paris to return to the U.S., he has taught workshops at many universities and colleges, as well as acting in plays from dinner theatre farces to Beckett's "Waiting for Godot". He taught for three years at the graduate school of the University of Missouri at Kansas City, in their Professional Actor Training Program before moving to the Washington DC area.

He is currently a member of the Big Apple Circus Clown Care Unit in Washington and Baltimore, and most recently returned from Salzburg, Austria, where he co-wrote and directed a new play entitled (in German) "Schnick Schnack".