Cocktails & Conversation: "Fools Breaking Rules" with Chase Brantley
Contemporary clowning technique as a lens into the Renaissance stage
Booking and details
Dates Fri, Oct 9, 2026, at 7pm
Tickets $20
Duration 45 minutes
Join us for an evening of cocktails and conversation with Folger Artistic Research Fellow Chase Brantley! Be sure to arrive early for cocktail and food purchases at Quill & Crumb.
Brantley, a nine-time award-winning clown and director, will lead an interactive conversation using contemporary clowning technique as a lens into the Renaissance stage.
Guided by le jeu (play) and complicité (connection), two central tenets of modern clowning, participants will explore how today’s clowns build a bit, read a room, and play with an audience—and how those living techniques can give us insight into how historical clowns likely structured their own routines and relationship to the crowd.
About Folger Institute
The Folger Institute is a center for early modern research at the Folger Shakespeare Library that brings public audiences together with researchers to explore the cultures and legacies of the early modern world. Learn more.
Speaker
Chase Brantley
Speaking More Than Is Set Down: Historic Structures in Clowning
2026-27 Folger Institute Artistic Research Fellow
Chase Brantley is an award-winning clown, graduate of École Philippe Gaulier, and founder of Moonlight Theater Company (est. 2018), based in Athens, GA. He has directed or collaborated on more than 25 productions in the US, UK, and Europe, including work as a clown coach on shows that were featured in The New York Times recommendations. His current show Don Toberman: Ping-Pong Champ has won over eight awards and received five-star reviews during his sold-out run at the 2025 Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
At the Folger Shakespeare Library, Brantley will be researching how historical English clowns designed and built the structures around their performance, including games, spatial arrangements, costumes, sound effects, and audience permission systems. Treating the archives as a rehearsal partner, he hopes to challenge and expand his contemporary clown practice by exploring primary clown courses like Robert Armin’s Quips Vpon Questions and the Folger’s vast collection of anti-clowning literature.
Folger Theatre
After the talk ends, join us for the 8pm performance of Measure for Measure.
Measure for Measure
How to Conjure Demons Using the Holdings at the Folger Shakespeare Library: A Primer
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Brandi K. Adams explores how concerns about “artificiall intelligence” manifest in the 16th and 17th centuries, reflecting the concerns of our own time.
Roguery and Redemption in 'Stanleyes Remedy' (1646)
The cautionary tale of this English Civil War-era pamphlet follows a respectable barrister’s descent into a life of crime and his ultimate redemption through repentance, a narrative shaped by the political imperatives of the time.
Re-writing and Reimagining Early Modern Witchcraft Through Creative Practice
Artistic Research Fellow Evelyn Reidy shares how she is using the Folger’s collection material related to witchcraft, early modern beliefs, and women’s knowledge to help her portray the women executed in Salem in 1692-93 in her new play, More Weight, or I Saw Goody Proctor at the Gift Shop.
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Artistic Research Fellow Billy Morgan shares and contextualizes an excerpt of a fiction piece shaped by their work at the Folger.