About Candy Bones Theatre
Candice Roberts is a 5th generation settler and artist based on the ancestral and unceded territories of the Coast Salish Peoples, including the territories of the xÊ·mÉ™θkwÉ™yÌ“É™m (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and SÉ™lÌ“ílwÉ™taÊ”/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.
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She is the band leader of the critically acclaimed Myrtle Sisters, is a founding member of the Jessie Award-nominated Dusty Flowerpot Cabaret Society, and the artistic director of Candy Bones Theatre.
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​Her original theatrical works and film shorts interweave physical theatre, music, mask, movement and clown to create stories that investigate the humour, heartbreak and the trials and tribulations of our human conditions.
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Cultivating anti-oppressive and intersectional understandings are important in Candice’s artistic research of creativity, decolonization and the connections between self expression, mental health and community.
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Candice has received numerous awards at the Vancouver and Edmonton Fringe Festivals, in addition to a 2014 Mayor’s Arts Award for her work in community building through the arts. Candy Bones Theatre is dedicated to creating and sharing innovative and original inter-arts theatre works of artistic excellence for young audiences.
Theatre for Family Audiences
OOPSIE (Theatre & School Show)
Our character, Dr. Professor, is on a quest for a conclusion to the question, “Is it OK to make mistakes?” When taking their research to the young experts of the classroom, more than a few foibles cause the doctor to continuously fail. With help from the students, together they uncover how mistakes can help us learn and make new discoveries. Award-winning inter-arts maestro Candice Roberts performs this fun and clever story about growth mindset and the creative process through a seamless weaving of shadow puppetry, original music, tap dance and physical comedy in this fun and interactive theatrical workshop experience.
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This show is also available as a pre-recorded show with a 30-minute Zoom/Teams/Google Meet interactive workshop & Q&A.
Grade Suitability: K-7
Duration: 60-min including 15-min Q&A
Capacity: 300 students
Ideas Bobert (Theatre Show)
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What happens if we deny our deepest dreams and desires? Bobert is a silent character a la Charlie Chaplin who has a little red bird for a heart. His story asks us, what happens if we are to deny our deepest dreams and desires? Teetering on the brink of absolute failure, love-sick Bobert discovers his heart to be more important than he knew.
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From award-winning creator and actor Candice Roberts, comes a clown tour de force of comedy and conundrum. With vintage silent film styling, shadow puppetry, stop motion animation projections, dance and live music, the world of Ideas Bobert is rich with magic and creativity. Like Ginger Rogers meets Mr. Bean on the Muppet show, Ideas Bobert dances with the hilarious absurd.
More about the show and its creator: Ideas Bobert is whimsy and fiction, but for its creator Candice Roberts, it resonates with her truth. Common amongst many comedy artists, Candice has struggled with anxiety and depression. She claims that clown school saved her life. For her, the art of clowning encompasses such fundamental life-skills as connection with oneself and community, creative communication and of becoming comfortable in the discomfort that is the unknown.
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Clowning for her celebrates the multi-facets of what it means to be human. It is the investigation of what is absurd or confounding about ourselves and society. It is the sharing of vulnerability and honesty and the dissolving of shame through exposure.
Through Ideas Bobert, she hopes to inspire a deep belly laugh, a tender tear and a reminder of how important it is to listen with our hearts and to be in touch with our creative selves.
Grade Suitability: K-7
Duration: 60-min including 15-min artist talk back
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Virtual Plays on Arts IQ
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"Ideas Bobert" & "Oopsie" are professionally filmed films that are available for teachers and schools to share with their students. For pricing for 1-year access, visit artsiq.ca/candy-bones-theatre.
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Theatre & Clown Workshop: A Fool for Life!
Nothing in life is scripted. Every day we improvise. Unexpected situations call for our focus, presence and immediate improvisation! In this workshop, students will play with their ability to listen to their intuition and honour their impulses in delightful and spontaneous ways. There is no right or wrong; there are NO MISTAKES!
This workshop offers students a variety of fun theatre games and exercises that build physical and emotional awareness, and promotes connection with themselves, their environment and others. They will play with ways that loosen up their comfort in being seen as their whole present selves —sometimes vulnerable and always genuine. Like any social and interactive skill, these can be learned and practiced to help overcome anxieties, recognize non-verbal communication, promote self discovery, mindful risk-taking, team building, critical thinking and creativity.
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Grade Suitability: K-12 (customized for various age groups)
Duration: 1-day or multi-day workshops
Capacity: Entire school (1 class per block up to 5 workshops/day)​​​​​​​​​​​​
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The Can Do's (Roving Act)
Join the band! The Can-Do’s are an alter-ego troupe of the Myrtle Sisters and they will not be missed! They hand out chopsticks and invite you to cacophonously clang away on their tin-can skirts! People of all ages delightfully jam along while the sisters sing and you ting and tang.
Myrtle Sisters
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The Myrtle Sisters, featuring Candice Roberts, Nayana Fielkov, and Kat Single-Dain, are a trio of east Vancouver performers delighting audiences of all ages with their harmonies, twinkling-tap numbers and family antics! They’ve been showcasing a clowning, vaudeville and dance menagerie of musical calamity for over 10 years in a variety of venues. Expect plenty of charm and shenanigans along with their original and historic songs and dances. The music stands on its own, but their onstage family antics, tap stylings and wild tunes are not to be missed.
Theatre for Adults
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The Candy Bones Show
Into the psyche of an Awkward Introvert
Like a modern-day Carol Burnett, Candice Roberts plays the hilarious, heartbreaking, and often embarrassing characters that make up her own psyche. The Candy Bones Show is an autobiographical sketch comedy where Candy’s neurosis, family support, and fears (to name a few) take on their own identities and vignettes in her struggle to find love and acceptance. The Candy Bones Show weaves heartfelt storytelling with dance, shadow puppetry, and comedy to joyously reflect the trials and tribulations of being human.
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Duration: 60 to 90 minutes (depending on request)
Warning: coarse language, strobe, adult content- drinking/trauma/sexual reference
Larry
LARRY is a complex, fearless and very funny portrait of a small-town Canadian dude on a path of self-discovery. He wants to prove that he’s worthy of a good woman, that he can quit drinkin’ and even take up “medertation”.
It turns out that LARRY’s journey into his own psyche uncovers more than he expected…
Candice Roberts uses her alter ego Larry to explore her experiences growing up as a female in rural B.C. in the 1980s. Culled from the male archetypes that surrounded her during her upbringing, Larry helps her investigate gender stereotypes—and makes people laugh.
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Duration: 60 minutes/ with optional artist talkback/workshop
Rating: 18+ Nudity, Course Language, Strobe
DOWNLOADS
TESTIMONIALS
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
“All ages will enjoy the fine clown work of the multi-talented Roberts. Anyone with a curious heart will find theirs a flutter watching Ideas Bobert”
—Winnipeg Free Press
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★ ★ ★ ★ ★
”Charming and skillfully performed.”
—CBC Winnipeg
”Ideas Bobert is a leap into a silent-movie that you will be very reluctant to ever leave. Heartwarming and hilarious, inventive and inspiring. Truly the kind of theatre magic you can never plan for but only hope for, and will leave you with your eyes popping and your heart flying high”
—Kevin Reid, The Visitorium
”This show opens young eyes and spirits to the world of self expression, growth mindset, following one's heart, 1920's history, clowning, many music forms and copious amounts of creativity”
—Marie Whimbey, Wolf School