About

or: who's this clown?

Hi! I'm Candace. My work is clown and queer; it seeks to challenge and stretch what is expected or known into a kinder, more caring, more attentive, and more inclusive space than the world at large.

It needs to exist so I can.

I make work that imagines a brighter world, that reflects what I see around me, and refracts it to emphasize the absurdities of day to day life of a working class, queer, southerner. I want to make work that makes you laugh and cry at the same time and makes you wonder, is this the way that things actually have to be? Why?

I currently reside on Powhatan land - otherwise known as Richmond, VA, USA - but I work all around the country and the world, both remotely and while traveling. I love to connect with folks from locales I've never been to and hear about the places that they love.

I am available for freelance, part time, or full time directing, producing, designing, VO, and writing work. (Yes, that is a lot of things! I'm a very curious person!) My email is the best way to reach me, and is situated at the top and bottom of this page.

This about page was last updated in March of 2025.

Recommendations

"[Candace is] vaguely in that fae/goblin/leprechaun intersection. The kind of creature who laughs at kings and only finds themselves silent in the presence of a stage."

- Xalavier Nelson Jr., the BAFTA-nominated, Forbes 30-under-30 game designer and director

Directing

I Tried to Say, "I Love You" But I Had a Cigarette in My Mouth by Eva Linder

An original play about some of the messiest lesbians to grace the streets of 2011 Brooklyn and how they hurt each other, intentionally and not.

I directed and sound designed this world premiere that was co-produced by the playwright herself at the Basement in Richmond, VA. This included iterating on revisions of the script with the playwright, casting from local talent, advocating for a unique use of the venue's space, working within an incredibly strict budget, and of course collaborating with actors and designers who I had never worked with before to bring the show to life. All of this was done without a dedicated stage manager on the team, so I provided significant support to the production process as a whole.

My direction and design work on this show was informed by the stylings of tv dramas. I embraced the cinematic story telling of the script by closely referencing video editing - crossfades where two scenes blended into each other, cutaway gags to a scene within a scene facilitated by bold shifts in lighting, sound, and movement, and L cuts where the sound would linger into the next scene, to name a few. This gave the show a familiar styling that invited audiences less familiar with the theatrical medium into the experience. This proved effective, as the show had a completely sold out run.

Further information about the play can be found on its website and its Instagram page.

Cigs photos by Adam.

The Story Reaper

This spooky collection of narratives will take listeners all over the world with the Storyreaper and their apprentice as they listen to and collect the strangers' mysterious accounts. This world is full of untold tales - frightful and profound, fantastical and honest. These stories are waiting. And they must be collected.

I cast and voice directed season one of the all ages fantasy-horror podcast The Story Reaper. The season includes 8 episodes written by 8 different writers, all of marginalized genders, including myself for the final episode Hungry House.

The cast includes 24 actors across 46 different characters, obviously with many of the actors doubling roles.

Episodes can be found on Overcast, Apple Podcasts, Pocket Casts, or wherever you collect your podcasts.

Exit 7 by Clare Beth McConnell

Exit 7 is an original coming of age story - a story about broken rules, infatuation with books, delirious laughter, gut-wrenching mistakes, small untruths, and disarming declarations. But, most of all, this is a story about girls.

In winter of 2021, I directed this original play to be performed masked but live in a theater, filmed and then broadcasted to the virtual audience. I met Clare Beth at the O'Neill National Theater Institute, and we've been longtime collaborators since then, and I thank her for trusting me with this piece in these very unique circumstances.

I directed the play completely virtually, never meeting the actors, stage manager, or designers in person during the process. We coordinated over email, drive, and discord to create the piece. It came together with a budget of $400 thanks to the team of student designers at Furman, where Clare Beth was (at the time) a senior. Full credits can be found in the video's description.

Exit 7 photos by Kaitlin Noble.

Additional Theatrical Credits and Training:

• The Kennedy Center's Directing Intensive
• EmergeNYC's artist-activist cohort
• Physical Theatre semester at Accademia dell'Arte in Arezzo, Italy
• Advanced Directing semester at the National Theater Institute at the O'Neill
• Mooseburger Clown Arts Camp
• Assistant director to Chelsea Burke and to Julie J

Voice Acting

I have extensive vocal training - primarily from my musical theatre background - and I have decided to use my powers for evil I voice characters in video games, podcasts, and animation. I am listed in the QueerVox database.

Credits

• Incidental characters in El Paso, Elsewhere and Life Eater
• Incidental characters in The Story Reaper (alongside casting and directing the project)
• Nikomedes Anisop in The Sound of Your Name and Enthusiastic Tagger in Under the Electric Stars, both a part of the Aster Podcasting network
• NDA training scenarios for a prominent LGBTQIA+ organization

Trained with

• Forrest McClendon, Dory Rebekah Sibley, Jermaine Rowe, Dave McRee, Tommy Mandel, Theresa Buchheister, Ryan William Downey, Rachael Messer, and Sarah Natochenny

Sound Design

I have designed sound in Richmond, VA for many of the local theaters. These plays include:

• H*tler's Tasters by Michelle Kholos Brooks at 5th Wall Theatre
• Buried Child by Sam Shepard at The Firehouse Theatre (TNT@FT)
• Cigarette play at The Basement
• The Light* by Loy A. Webb and Dr. Ride's American Beach House by Liza Birkenmeier at Yes, And! Theatrical Co. *Nominated for RTCC's Outstanding Achievement in Sound Design
• How I Learned to Drive by Paula Vogel at The Conciliation Lab
• Collective Rage by Jen Silverman, Stonewallin' by Kari Barclay, Vincent River by Philip Ridley, and The Pink Unicorn by Elise Forier Edie at Richmond Triangle Players

I am always available for new sound design projects, and welcome inquiries.

Games

Studio Producer at Strange Scaffold

I served as the Lead Producer at Strange Scaffold for our 2023 vampire-hunting, world-ending shooter, El Paso, Elsewhere.

• I managed a fully remote team of 12 core collaborators (plus the two contracted teams handling porting and QA) from Brazil to Japan - a 12 hour time difference across the team - to deliver the 50-level, fully voiced game.
• Production on the game started in 2020, and I joined March 2023, providing key documentation, organization, and scheduling to ensure we successfully hit our release date in September of 2023.
• I continue to provide post-launch support, and immediately following our internal postmortem, I was asked to produce the studio's next game, Life Eater.

Since then, I have produced the critical darling CLICKOLDING and am currently producing their upcoming co-op kaiju horror cooking title.

Good Lord!

Good Lord! Everyone at the Reunion For My Religious All-Girls School Is a Trans Man... And They're Hot?! is a a romantic comedy otome dating sim featuring a cast of all trans masculine love interests developed in two months for the Otome Jam and the Trans Representation Jam 2024.

I directed and produced this game with a team of 10 remote collaborators - all of which I had not worked with directly before.

It did not have marketing pre-release, but went viral on twitter because of the title, garnering over 25k views in a week!

Rat House Games

Rat House Games is a New York based studio of multidisciplinary queer artists and game designers brought together by humor as a tool for resilience. They aim to tell lighthearted stories through accessible games that empower marginalized communities.

During the 2021 Cohort of EmergeNYC, I met Jason Wang. Jason presented a 5 minute sketch comedy piece called Ranked Choice Dating, styled like a dating sim. It is a darkly satiric look at the 2021 NYC mayoral race, and I loved the black humor. I told them I had made visual novels before and wanted to develop the idea into a full game. They agreed, so we collaborated to create a tiny studio named Rat House Games.

• We brought together a team of 7 - primarily first time game devs - to develop all 10 endings.
• We completed art, sound, programming, and writing in 3 months total.
• The game has been performed as a show in the Brick's ?! Festival (September 2021, NYC), and Tuesday Night Project's Queer All Year show (June 2023, LA).
• We have also been featured by From the Intercom.

Solo Dev

I have been developing games by myself (or on small jam teams) since 2016. Most notably:

• My storybook game Professor Quackerton in: The Locked Birdhouse was featured in Indiepocalypse's 29th Issue.
• The roleplaying game/zine Cryptid Miscommunication was successfully funded on Kickstarter in February 2021 as a part of Zine Quest 3 and was printed at Studio Two Three in RVA.
• Map Your Home is a business card sized micro-rpg that has been taught in a college course on game design.

You can find more of my games and jam work on my itch.io page.

Writing Samples

My writing can be seen in action in Professor Quackerton in: The Locked Birdhouse, the jam game A Reel Mystery, and The Story Reaper episode 8: Hungry House (coming soon).

Animated Short

So You're Probably Wondering- is a 3 page action comedy starring a tiny pug super spy.

Dialogue

A 10 page selection of dialogue snippets pulled from my scripts and screenplays. In order: Buyer's Remorse (live action), Sewer Rat (stage), and Closer Than They Seem (animation).