For over 40 years, Just For Laughs has presented to comedy fans in Montreal the biggest names ever to take up the stand-up comedy microphone. It has also become an important showcase for up-and-coming comics looking for that big break.
That aspect first came around in 1994 with the establishment of New Faces in Comedy. In front of full houses that included managers, agents, producers and other figures in the entertainment industry, specially selected comics performed at these showcases in the hope of being discovered as the next big name in comedy.
How successful were these New Faces showcases? They helped springboard the careers of past participants such as Kevin Hart, Amy Schumer, Ali Wong, Colin Jost and Sugar Sammy. As well, New Faces has expanded beyond the stand-up category. Additional showcases under the New Faces umbrella include characters, creators and this year, writers.
Packed house at Club Soda
This week, I attended a New Faces stand-up showcase for the second time. And yes, there was a full house at Club Soda that was a mix of ticket-buying spectators and industry people, as 11 experienced stand-up comics plied their comedy best with the hope of taking the next step towards expanding their respective careers. And the audience certainly wasn’t disappointed in what was presented to them.
In fact, based on the buzz generated from the many animated conversations I overheard as everyone filed out of Club Soda when the 7 p.m. show ended, these 11 comics deliver something to look forward to.
New Faces Highlights
Some personal New Faces highlights include: Chris Renois explaining the dilemma of being the only Black person living with four White roommates (and how he radicalized one of their pet dogs by making it watch the miniseries Roots), as well as when as a teenager, he helped his uncle’s campaign to run for the President of Haiti; Christina Mariani, an autistic comic who as an Italian, could relate to the Mexican community, especially when it came to parental corporate punishment (“My mom beat me with weapons. First with a wire hanger, then with a belt…when I was born.”); Toronto native Hassan Phills, who punctuated his set with the phrase “I was the first one in my bloodline” (case in point: “I was the first one in my bloodline to have a White roommate…who was also an aspiring rapper.”); Fiona Cauley, who labels herself as a “disabled Irish woman” entertained the audience with examples of her friends’ bachelorettes in places that are not exactly wheelchair accessible, such as the beach and the cobblestoned streets of New Orleans; and the cherubic Payton Ruddy, who delivered a killer set that touched on why he is always referred to as “Big Baby,” speed readers vs. those who have read the same book for over nine years, and Tinder profiles in which some people deemed their involvement with Black Lives Matter as a “hobby”.
Thanks to New Faces of Comedy, the future of comedy in general is firmly assured.
Just For Laughs’ Sketch Series not sketchy at all
Sketch comedy is a constant in the many facets that make up the comedy world. Just look at Saturday Night Live, SCTV, and Kids in the Hall as some of the best-known and long-standing examples of this genre.
Within the friendly confines of Theatre St. Catherine, Just For Laughs’ Sketch Series presented two shows featuring two sketch comedy groups each, offering vivid examples of how one can stretch the limits of sketch comedy to make it interesting rather than ordinary.
The first group onstage was Small Fish, an Ottawa-based female duo who performed several rather bizarre sketches that were interspersed with video bridges and songs. Highlights include wedding singers who offered a song about a tampon string; and the adventures of a 14-year-old farm girl who wanted a horse for her birthday but ended up with a non-binary, trans, yellow-colored talking horse named Turmeric.
Small Fish’s material is reminiscent of the early years of The Kids in the Hall. When I mentioned that to the duo after the show, one of them revealed that they had performed at the same theatre where the Kids got their start.
The sketch quartet Tandem Jump‘s set was filled with their twisted takes on such things as action movies from foreign countries (the Albanian cult classic “Karate Cops” in all of its bad acting glory); the classic sitcom scenario of the one person, two dates at the same time switcheroo; and audience participation at improv sketch shows.
For more information, or to purchase tickets, to any Just For Laughs show, go to hahaha.com.
