From The Making Box to the Guelph Comedy Festival

Braeden Ettiene has performed at Guelph Hillside Festival, Guelph FRINGE and now the Guelph Comedy Festival. CREDIT: JASPER TEY

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Braeden Etienne’s first time doing comedy was during a job interview for The Making Box, Guelph’s former improv theatre and home for live comedy.

“They had us do improv together with the people we were competing against for the job as well as all the owners of the company so my first time doing improv was at a job interview,” Etienne said.

After that interview, Etienne was hired and took a level one improv course, as per the job requirements.

“I'm always a big proponent of creativity and the spontaneous creativity that came with improv was really attractive to me,” he said. “So, then I took level two, level three, level four, voluntarily.”

Etienne was in charge of booking acts for the shows that took place at The Making Box. He said that’s when he started experimenting with stand-up comedy.

“It was pretty easy to just slot my name in,” he joked.

Slotting his name into shows at The Making Box has led Etienne to perform comedy at places like The Canadian Festival for Spoken Word, Guelph’s Hillside Festival, the Guelph Fringe Festival and the Guelph Comedy Festival, but Etienne still thinks of himself as a writer first.

“That seems to kind of be the broadest stroke,” he said. “In that writing umbrella is comedy so I'm stand up as well as an improviser.”

But like many comedians, the pandemic restricted their creativity and ability to perform in front of a live audience.

In 2020, The Making Box closed because of COVID-19 and was forced to pivot to a different delivery method. Etienne said this made them question how they could keep delivering improv and keep pushing themselves as comedians.

“How can we kind of accept this terrible opera that is COVID and move forward with it?” Etienne asked.

“So we did a lot of self reflection as an organization and found probably the best path forward was to bring this idea of applied improvisation to organizations and the community at large.”

The Making Box currently creates team building activities based on improvisation and being yourself. Since switching to an online format, they’ve been able to lead workshops for organizations such as the University of Guelph, Google, Shopify and the University of Calgary.

During the pandemic, Etienne explored his writing further in a series of short stories posted on his blog, braedenetienne.com.

“I was so used to being a performer,” he said. “Like, I was on an improv team with The Making Box and we were doing monthly weekly shows kind of thing… My form of creativity was like collaborative performance. And then the pandemic came and there was nobody except for myself.”

He found himself on long walks, making up stories about things like an improv trio trying to get into heaven, or a man who definitely isn’t Etienne talking to his therapist about accidentally becoming “the funky socks guy.”

He also shared candid honesty about learning to “brand yourself” in public relations school on his blog.

“I think what I like to go by is like, what is something that feels really true or honest and I like, follow that thread more than what I want people to think of it,” he said.

But Etienne is ultimately happy that restrictions are over and comedians can get back to doing what they love - making people laugh.

Since pandemic restrictions ended, Etienne said the Guelph Comedy Festival is the one helping bring live comedy back to Guelph in conjunction with The Making Box.

Etienne performed in the Guelph Comedy Festival’s Stand Up Showcase on Oct. 21 alongside local comedians and Amazing Race contestant Cedric Newman.

“You get that mix of like a really established Canadian comedian mixed in with some of these like local up and comers,” he said. “I think it makes for a really nice balance of like, just local talent and those you know, bigger names that people want to see as well. So you kind of get a little bit of everything.”

Now that the Guelph Comedy Festival has come to a close, Etienne is focusing on his next venture, whatever that may be.

“It's probably going to be something with poetry or comedy, but I've been finding this year generally that things are just popping up as I'm ready for them,” he said.

Wherever that may take him, one thing is for sure… He’ll probably show up wearing funky socks because he’s apparently “one of those funky socks guys.” Just don’t call him that.