Washed-up ping-pong star Don Toberman enters on stage, hyped up and ready to make his comeback after a mental breakdown and multiple rehab stays. But nothing can stop Toberman this time, right? He exhibits his prowess by challenging audience members to rounds of invisible ping pong, until absurdity derails his story.
Toberman is a character developed and played by professional clown Chase Brantley, and it came about through Brantley exploring outrageous playfulness in anger in the comedy setting. The show itself is a spoof on sports culture, including a halftime show. It has all the elements of modern clowning, a comedy form that can be traced back thousands of years and has undergone many changes.
“Modern clowning is about many things, but it’s about spirit. The pleasure to be on stage. When you see a modern clown that’s excellent, they enter the stage and you immediately love them. As an adult it doesn’t feel like a children’s party. And you usually think, ‘Oh my God, who is this fucking idiot?’” says Brantley. “They make you laugh every five seconds, and you don’t know what you’re laughing at. It was the thing that drew me to clown, which is that I saw some performers where I left their shows and I didn’t know what was funny, and I laughed the whole time.”
Stand-up comedy centers on the joke being told, without requiring props or audience interaction inherently. A flop equals a bad joke, but clowns continually flop and recover as part of their act. Improv is usually a team activity based on scene creation within the bubble of what’s happening on stage. Brantley explains that clowning is different from these other forms of comedy because the audience is the only thing that matters—a good clown is listening to and taking cues from the audience at all times.
Brantley has 200 sound cues in the Don Toberman show to guide what he does next and keep the show relatively on track, but ultimately when the audience starts laughing it’s the clown’s job to lean into whatever the crowd finds funny in that moment.
The launch of the 2025 world tour of “Don Toberman: Ping-Pong Champ” is taking place in Athens, Brantley’s home base, on Saturday, Jan. 11 at Canopy Studio. This show is a fundraiser benefitting the rest of the tour happening later this year, as well as efforts to build up the clown scene in Athens.
However, Brantley won an Arts Unlimited grant, funded by the government of Australia for international artists, to bring his clown performance to the other side of the world. The grant covers airfare, housing and venue fees. During Brantley’s three-week stay in Australia in March he will perform the Toberman show about 20 times with an additional 20 runs of his other material, too. Having managed and produced comedy shows since 2016, planning an international tour fit right into his wheelhouse.
“I’m so excited to go. I actually know a lot of Australian clowns. A lot of my good friends from college were Australian. So I probably know six or seven amazing Australian performers who will be at the fringe at the same venue as me,” says Brantley.
Once back in the states, Brantley has plans for a national tour May through July. But then he’s off again to Edinburgh, Scotland for a run of 26 shows over a month span. Across all of these performances, the magic of clown is that each show will be uniquely driven by the audience. Although the storyline remains the same, truly anything could happen to send the clown into a comedic spiral—or perhaps, a promising clown might be found within the audience.
“I think my hope for the show always is that people leave and they feel a little bit like a child again in the way that they are like, ‘Oh, I forgot we could be that playful. I forgot that comedy could be that simple,’” says Brantley. “It’s fun to see what crazy things people will do when you give them permission.”
Although it is a highly interactive show, shy or more observant audience members don’t have to fear that they’ll be forced to get on stage or participate in a way they don’t want to. “No” is fully respected in the clown arena.
“To go to a space where someone is giving permission to be an idiot, to fail, to be confused, to be lost and have joy in that space is powerful because those are just average human experiences that we try to bury so much,” says Brantley.
WHO: “Don Toberman: Ping-Pong Champ”
WHEN: Saturday, Jan. 11, 8 p.m.
WHERE: Canopy Studio
HOW MUCH: $15
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