Montreal will be sending in the clowns at the 7th annual Montreal Clown Festival.
During those four days at two venues — the MainLine Theatre and the Gesu — the festival will offer shows that feature some of the best clown talent across North America and will showcase a variety of the art of clown performance.
It all begins on April 25 at the MainLine with a new faces-type of showcase called New Recipes: A Cabaret of New Works. The following day, the Gesu will be the place for the Festival Cabaret: The Big, Big Deal that will be emceed by the real-life duo of Philippe “Philidor” Thibaudeau and Becky “Hoops” Priebe, with Raphaelle Pepin, Marie-Pierre Petit, Emily Jeffers, Moshe Cohen and Joel Baker as part of the evening’s line-up of fun. On April 27, a clown variety show will take place with a triple bill featuring Jamie Adkins, Avner “The Eccentric” Eisenberg (who delighted audiences at the 1992 Just For Laughs festival) and Quebecois duo Laurette & Ariette; a late night clown show called Old God (starring Las Vegas-based clown Alec Jones-Trujillo) tops off the evening’s programming. The festival concludes on April 28 with three distinctive shows: Driving Around with Amrita Kaur Dhaliwal, Ethel: Outside with Christine Moynihan and Larry, a gender-bender clown show starring Candy Roberts,
The Montreal Clown Festival will also present shows for kids and kids at heart with local troupes Cie In Toto, L’Aubergine and Montreal artist Hugues Sarra-Bournet; there will also be outdoor performances — free of charge — with Nacho Con Salsa, LaboKracBoom and Hercinia Arts Collective/Trellis Arts.
Stuart Nulman was born and raised in Montreal. He began his journalism career in 1980 as an entertainment reporter/reviewer for the Vanier College student newspaper. Two years later, he worked as a summer student intern at CBC Montreal, where he worked in the English TV news division, CBC Radio and CBC Communications. During the late 80s, he worked as an assistant copy editor and columnist for The Suburban Newspaper for three years, and then joined the staff of the Hampstead/Weekly Herald before it closed in 1991. Stuart also worked as a comedy researcher/writer for the Just For Laughs festival, where he was responsible for creating and editing the festival's entire advertising and program book copy for the 1994 edition, as well as providing background research about comedians who performed there. After a seven-year stint as a technical editor for the flight simulator company CAE Inc., Stuart returned to the world of journalism, writing book reviews, covering the Montreal summer festival scene, conducting celebrity interviews and writing travel pieces for a number of platforms, such as the Montreal Times, BestStory.ca (a long form journalism website), and his blog Stuart Nulman's Grapevine. As well, since 2009, he does a book review segment called "Book Banter", which is heard twice a month on The Stuph File Program with Peter Anthony Holder podcast, which evolved from the segment of the same name he did for 19 years on CJAD's "Holder Tonight/Overnight" program. He also authored the book "Beyond the Mountain: True Tales About Montreal", which was published in 2002 and was a local bestseller, which peaked at #2 on the Gazette's nonfiction best seller list. Stuart is currently semi-retired after working for 20 years at the English Montreal School Board (EMSB), and still writes articles, reads and reviews books, and travels more frequently.
