The Making-Box presents Royal City Heroes
The Making-Box’s Royal City Heroes uses improv to forge connections within the community. This edition welcomed Kithio Mwanzia, the president and CEO of Guelph Chamber of Commerce. Established in 1827, the Guelph Chamber is a non-profit organization that works to assist the community through economic expansion and prosperity.
Hayley Kellett hosted the evening wonderfully. She warmed the audience up with an improv game called categories where audience members shouted out a broad category, like “food” or “children’s breakfast cereals.” The improvisers would then list things until the audience buzzed them out.
Later, Kellett introduced Mwanzia and discussed the Guelph Chamber. Mwanzia was particularly proud of the Chamber’s aim to “build opportunity for the community” and the fact that Guelph would be “welcoming 75 families from Syria.” Paraphrasing Uncle Ben from Spider-Man, Mwanzia explained that with great prosperity comes great responsibility.
Mwanzia was charming, funny, and seemed very much at home on stage. So it was no surprise that The Making-Box Brigade’s sketches based on Mwanzia’s responses were also very funny. One sketch in particular took the Spider-Man reference to heart and followed a super-hero transformation caused by a radioactive calculator.
The Ontarion asked Kellett if there is a difference in improvising based on interviewing an artist versus a non-artist.
“Not really. It definitely will draw a different crowd but […] every Making-Box crowd is unique and different. […] The special guest is celebrated regardless of what their field is […] Everyone’s got interesting stories, everyone has unique history, and everyone has something they are an expert in. In May, we’re having the mayor come out and he’s an expert, right? […] It’s all about The Making-Box building community through comedy. […] Everybody is inspiring in their own way,” said Kellett.
Kellett asked Mwanzia what businesses he found inspiring. He chose: Canadian Solar (a leading manufacturer of solar PV modules and provider of solar energy solutions) and Lucky Iron Fish (a health innovation that reduces instances of iron deficiency and anemia in countries such as Cambodia).
After the first half of the show Cas Knihnisky, an improviser, spoke to The Ontarion about the show.
“I think Royal City Heroes is very important for building and nurturing the community of Guelph, which is already so tight-knit, but it helps make the relationships between community partners. It helps give the general public a better sense of what’s going on in their community. […] It’s very easy to compartmentalize certain areas of this community, [so] bridging the arts with other business you wouldn’t otherwise see [is important],” Knihnisky explained.
In the second half, Kellett chose an everyday hero from the audience: Alex. He told a story about a typical day in his life after which the brigade improvised for another 15 minutes based on the details provided to them. Listening is definitely this bunch’s strong suit.
After the show, The Ontarion spoke to Mwanzia about what he enjoyed about his experience with Royal City Heroes.
“What I enjoyed the most is that, as an organization that has focused on building community, we have the opportunity to be where community is. Dedicating ourselves to supporting community in a unique way and by being here, and being on stage, talking about Guelph’s strengths, where Guelph is going, how there is opportunity for individuals to get involved, the great businesses that are pushing us forward—having the chance to communicate that in this arena is particularly exciting and I really loved the opportunity,” said Mwanzia.
He then told The Ontarion that Guelphites possess a certain trait that makes them unique.
“The exciting thing is that people in Guelph have a discovery instinct. People didn’t necessarily know what I would be talking about or what I would be doing, but they have a discovery instinct, where people say, ‘I might not know, but I’m interested to at least spend the time, go to The Making-Box, learn, spend the two hours [to] three hours of the evening.’ And that’s one of the things that make us really unique as a community because that’s not everywhere, where that kind of discovery instinct exists,” said Mwanzia.