COURSE DESCRIPTION
This is not like most on-camera classes.
Clown for Commercial Acting is a two-day workshop for commercial actors who want to become more playful, spontaneous, and watchable in auditions.
Commercial auditions rarely reward perfection. They reward presence — the ability to stay alive, responsive, and human when things don’t go as planned. This workshop focuses on developing that skill through play, impulse, and learning how to use failure rather than avoid it.
This work is for commercial actors who feel capable but tight in auditions — who over-prepare, overthink, or try to get it “right.” It’s especially useful if comedy feels like a weak spot, if you freeze when asked to improvise, or if you sense there’s something watchable about you that isn’t quite coming through on camera yet.
The clown work in this course isn’t about being bigger or sillier. It’s about clarity, precision, and openness — learning how to follow an impulse, recover from a misstep, and stay connected even when something feels awkward or off. When that work is clear on stage, it transfers directly to camera: the lens picks up small shifts in attention, timing, and ease.
Day one focuses on off-camera clown and play-based work to build this foundation: listening, eye contact, physical intention, and using failure as information. Day two brings that work onto the lens through commercial sides, with special attention to lead-ins and buttons — the improvised moments where watchability, ease, and instinct often matter most. Watching others work is part of the learning, and the room is held with care, humor, and respect.
This workshop offers a different way in. Rather than adding tricks or polishing performances, it helps actors get out of their own way — so something natural, specific, and genuinely watchable can come through. Actors leave with a looser relationship to auditions, a clearer sense of their own presence, and a practical way to stay playful and responsive on camera — especially when things don’t go as planned.
WHAT YOU’LL WORK ON
• Letting go of “acting” and responding truthfully
• Using mistakes, uncertainty, and awkwardness as usable material
• Staying relaxed, specific, and alive on camera
• Improvised lead-ins and buttons
• Eye contact and openness — on stage and straight down the lens
• Scaling big, clear physical choices down for the camera
WHAT PEOPLE SAY ABOUT THE WORK
“After the workshop, I felt more playful and comfortable, trusted myself without planning or material, and felt much more tapped into my creative instincts.”
— Bita Joudaki, Comedian & TV Writer
(JFL Toronto, This Hour Has 22 Minutes, Children Ruin Everything)
“You feel like an idiot and it’s super vulnerable, but also funny. The audience lets you know pretty quickly what they like and don’t like, and Chase does a great job of summing it up so you walk away with genuinely useful information — even while kind of feeling insane.
It’s enlivening and worth it, especially if practicing failure is useful to you. For me, it is.”
— Rakhee Morzaria, Actor, Comedian & Writer
(Run the Burbs, What We Do in the Shadows, Mr. D, Second City)
“It’s like embarrassing yourself into becoming yourself. You get to fuck up in a room full of people, work through it, recover, and be better for it.
Chase is playful, encouraging, and safe, so even the scariest parts of clowning feel less intimidating. I’m now much more comfortable being silly in public. It’s been really healing for me.”
— Mia Hay, Actor & Riff Reps Student
“Chase is a fearless improviser with a sharp sense of humour and a deep grounding in clown dramaturgy. He’s a warm, sensitive, and rigorous teacher who cares deeply not only about his students’ learning journeys, but about the state of clown pedagogy itself.
He’s constantly experimenting, innovating within the form, and pushing it beyond a strictly clown-centric box, opening the work to new expressive comedic forms.
He’s simply one of the best clown teachers and performers in the city. Highly recommend watching him perform and taking his classes.”
— Adam Paolozza, Actor, Director & Artistic Director,
Bad New Days Theatre
These testimonials speak to the clown and Goofing work that forms the foundation of this unique approach to commercial acting.
ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR
Chase Jeffels is a Toronto-based actor, comedian, and teacher whose work blends clown, improvisation, and the practice of joyful failure.
His face has appeared in commercials across Canada and the U.S., including campaigns for Ritz Crackers, Milestones, and the NBA, among many others. His performance work spans film, television, and theatre. He appears in the Crave sketch series The Dessert, stars in an upcoming short film by viral comedian DangerBean, and has worked on a project with the director of Jackass.
Chase trained at École Jacques Lecoq in Paris and at George Brown Theatre School, and studied under legendary clown teacher Philippe Gaulier, who once said of his work:
“I do not like very much Canada, but I like what you do.”
Onstage, Chase mixes physical comedy, riffing, and direct audience connection to create performances that are unpredictable, awkward, and painfully human. He is a member of the improv and sketch collective $20 Sandwich, co-creator of the clown duo West 2 West, and the creator of Goofing — a punk-leaning approach to comedy that treats failure not as a mistake, but as the fastest path to connection.
This workshop draws directly from that practice, translating play, spontaneity, and failure into tools commercial actors can actually use on camera.