Montreal Just For Laughs News

I couldn’t make it this year due to some scheduling conflicts. I was thisclose to going but just couldn’t see my way there. But here’s what I’ve heard from the festival organizers:

Flying Solo Series: Our new Flying Solo series soared above and beyond the hopes of our programming team. Though it was not a complete sell-out, it reflects a new direction for Just For Laughs, young, hip, edgy programming. We are all about variety so its great that this new series has been so well received by fans and media.

Stand-out performances this year:

• Jay Oakerson - New Faces and Nasty Show
• Christian Finnegan - Gala
• Tim Nutt - Gala
• Reggie Watts - New Faces (one to watch)
• Patrice Oneal - Nasty
• Patty Rosborough - Relationship show and Nasty
• Katt Williams

Demetri Martin created a HUGE buzz this summer at the Fest. He was THE in-demand interview request. His performance was a knock-out.

Our new club shows: Asian Invasion and Comedy Showdown did very well. Steve Byrne was the stand-out performance at Asian and Andy Parsons was the winner of the Comedy Showdown.

Mark Forward won the Canadian Homegrown Comic Competition.

We added a very special event featuring John Cleese. An in-depth look at his career with a Q&A segment hosted by Ian Hanomansing.

La Clique - our wet, wild burlesque style show was absolutely wonderful and created a lot of buzz with the media.

For more personal experiences of the fest, check out Christian Finnegan’s better half the lovely Kambri Crews and her posts on the CC Insider and Shecky Magazine’s rundown of what they saw Wednesday and Thursday ( Part Un and Deux ). Also good is Chortle’s coverage. For more on the Festival visit hahaha.com