ASHEVILLE, N.C. (828newsNOW) — Comedian Candice Guardino is coming to the Wortham Center for the Performing Arts this weekend with “Italian Bred,” her one-woman, multi-character show.

Guardino will make her Asheville debut at 8 p.m., Saturday, April 18 at the Wortham Center, 18 Biltmore Ave. Find more details here.

What to expect at “Italian Bred”

In one form or another, Guardino has been performing “Italian Bred” for years.

“The show is such a journey. 
I started out working the characters in a comedy house or two, in 10, 20-minute little snippets,” Guardino said. “That morphed into a 90-minute show.”

Earlier this year, that 90-minute show then turned into a filmed special, now streaming on platforms like Amazon Prime Video and Apple TV.

However, Guardino says her “Italian Bred” is far from getting stale. The comedian’s one-woman show is constantly changing and evolving. According to Guardino, even audiences who have seen her act before may hear completely different stories seeing her again.

“Something beautiful about storytelling is that you can constantly change the stories and keep adding on,” Guardino said. “I get material from my family, so, for me, it’s like I have constant material all day, every day. In this particular world that I’ve created, the stories are timeless, and the characters are timeless because they’re based off of real people and reality.”

Guardino is a singer, enhancing her show with song, in addition to family stories. In “Italian Bred,” Guardino performs not only as herself, but also as her grandmother, father, mother and sister.

“I need to add in some animals,” Guardino joked. “My dog for sure, because my dog’s name is Cannoli, so I might as well just add in Cannoli!”

Playing the characters allows Guardino to relate family anecdotes from “their” perspective, taking on new voices and postures to embody each of her relatives. Occasionally, those characters talk to the crowd, too.

“I used to try to tailor it to be like, okay, only talk to the audience when you’re Candice, but sometimes I can’t help it, you know? Like, I’m having a moment of being in ‘Grandma,’ and then I literally love looking at the person in the front row and being like, ‘You know what I mean?'” Guardino said, adopting a gravely voice.

The tales Guardino recounts onstage are as relatable as they are absurd, like the story of how she got her period.

“I fell down a well,” Guardino said. “It actually involved the entire town coming to my rescue, and that’s when. The moment I decided to have this womanhood moment. And that, to me, was the story that I was like, this is gonna kill on stage.”

With “Italian Bred,” Guardino’s goal is to present a show that is fun for the whole family and captures the whole “raunbow of emotions”

“I want them to feel like they just had a full-on theatrical experience, whether they’re in the theater or their home,” Guardino said. 
”I want them to feel happy. I want them to, all of a sudden, a tear come to their eye because they’re like, 0h my god, she’s reminding me of my grandmother, or that happened to me.”

For more information about “Italian Bred,” visit www.italianbredshow.com.

For tickets to the Asheville performance, click here.