The festival aims to showcase local and national talent
The Guelph Comedy Festival kicked off on Sept. 30 with a special preview gala to celebrate the comedy community both in Guelph and across Ontario. The gala, hosted at the Guelph Youth Music Centre, opened with stand up sets by local talents Daina Wallace and The Ontarion‘s own Mirali Almaula, who each brought their own fresh flavour of comedy to start the evening off right.
The evening’s host was Hayley Kellett, co-founder of The Making-Box, who charmed the audience with anecdotes and by interacting with the fictitious “Guelph Youth Orchestra,” comprised of Making-Box improv regulars Spencer Dunn, Josh Anderson-Coats, and Rob Lewin.
Guelph’s growing comedy community has been known to be diverse in both style as well as representation, characteristics that Kellett is looking to showcase in the upcoming Guelph Comedy Festival.
“We’re doing a lot of collaborations this year, so the festival is going to be more diverse and more eclectic than you’ve seen in the past,” Kellett explained.
The two headlining acts of the night displayed the variety that the Guelph Comedy Festival is aiming to showcase this year, with stand up from Toronto’s Daniel Woodrow and sketch comedy from the Toronto-based troupe Falcon Powder. Woodrow, who has performed for the Guelph Comedy Festival before, took to the stage to deliver his cool and confident set of material. Even with a more laid back style, Woodrow was captivating to watch, meandering his way from joke to joke, but never losing the crowd’s attention.
Through events produced by the Making-Box, Guelph has had a considerable amount of stand up and improv, but sketch comedy is still a rarity in the Guelph comedy scene. The final act of the night, Falcon Powder, brought the house down with their surreal, and tightly choreographed set. Falcon Powder, comprised of Jim Annan, Scott Montgomery, and Kurt Smeaton, was originally an improv group before they were approached by the organizers of the Toronto Sketch Fest to participate in the festival, and have been doing sketch ever since.
Montgomery told The Ontarion that it took a “nightmare trip down to Atlanta Georgia” for the trio to realize that they were no longer interested in improv, and opted to become a full-time sketch group.
Falcon Powder’s performance was incredibly eclectic from their style to their tone, with each individual skit feeling like a fully realized, but unique, piece in the greater machine of their performance.
“We always like to have a variety of stuff, so we don’t have the same look over and over again,” explained Montgomery. “We have some talky scenes and we purposefully have some no-talking scenes, some of them are weirder than others.”
The variety of their performances has helped Falcon Powder stay interested in their own work and still find performing a worthwhile experience. “Sketch comedy is a landscapes of guys, standing onstage and talking to each other,” said Smeaton. “That doesn’t mean it’s not funny, it could be hilarious, but [the variety is] for us, is to keep us interested.”
According to Falcon Powder, the Guelph Comedy Festival is a key part of the growing comedy landscape in Canada, “Grassroots festivals [like this] create more troupes.” said Annan. “It looks fun, and you want to do it. I think that’s been steadily building.”
Photos by Mariah Bridgeman/The Ontarion.