There’s enough learning going on in schools. That’s why, when Candice Roberts visited Faro’s Del Van Gorder School in February, she was focussed on entertaining rather than teaching.
Any lessons that came out of the performance of her show, Oopsie, were a bonus, though Roberts does believe the two go hand-in-hand.
“We all learn best when we laugh, or through play,” said Roberts, the B.C.-based artistic director of Candy Bones Theatre. That’s part of the driving ethos behind her work with the company, which develops and performs theatre for young audiences. It works particularly well for Oopsie, a performance about making mistakes.
Roberts came up with the idea after thinking about how, as a youth, she spent a lot of time reaching to be what she calls “a better person.” She thinks she still does that now, but as an adult, she does it with a sense of curiosity and joy. When she was younger, she did it because she didn’t think she was good enough—she was reaching to “be better” because she was afraid to make mistakes.
As a clown and as a performer, you really want to get the audience in your hands and you want them to laugh at the right spots or feel things in the right spots.”
“But you need to make mistakes in the creative process,” Roberts said over the phone from Faro, where car trouble had her stranded in the middle of a community tour of the Yukon. That’s part of having a growth mindset, she said, where you can look at mistakes as opportunities to learn, rather than as failures.
Roberts originally developed the performance for a classroom of 30 with the help of a grant from the Canada Council for the Arts. Now, she performs it for anywhere from five to 500 students.
In February, with the help of the Yukon Arts Centre, she took Oopsie to Faro, Ross River and Pelly Crossing (she was also supposed to go to Mayo, but the car trouble bumped that date).
“YAC is really leaning into its mandate to serve the whole Yukon,” said Michele Emslie, director of programming for YAC, who travelled with Roberts on her mini-tour. “This year, we will have been to every community except Mayo … it feels like a privilege and an honour, not only to travel to communities, but to go into these schools and meet the staff and offer the opportunity to see Candy.”
Emslie said it was great to hear directly from teachers and students what they thought of the show, which weaves in comedy, shadow puppetry, a sprinkling of neuroscience, and ample audience interaction.
“They really appreciate this show, in part because of the fact that it’s fun and not serious. There is a learning element, but it’s not serious,” Emslie said.
In Oopsie, Roberts plays a clown-scientist in search of an answer to the question “is it ok to make mistakes?” Throughout, her audience is invited to yell suggestions and thoughts at Roberts. The dynamic is such that Roberts is the one making mistakes and the kids are the ones doing the teaching. They’re the experts, talking her through her own research. As her character gets increasingly frustrated, she turns to the kids to ask for tips on how to handle those feelings.
It’s pretty amazing, Roberts said, to have an audience of seven-year-olds telling you to take a drink of water, go for a walk, or ask someone for a hug.
It’s something she’s noticed over the years she’s been performing in schools—that there’s more of a focus now on soft skills. Kids are being taught to notice feelings, and teachers are looking at social and emotional wellness in a new way. It comes across in audience reaction.
“As a clown and as a performer, you really want to get the audience in your hands and you want them to laugh at the right spots or feel things in the right spots,” she said of her Yukon tour. “Everyone has been responding how I want them to. Teachers were laughing a lot. Even the high school kids, who are sometimes a little bit scary.”
In the moment, they were entertained. The hope is that, when the performance is over, they walk away feeling ok about making the kinds of mistakes that are inevitable in life.
Images of Pelly Crossing show by Mike Thomas
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