Just for Laughs Montreal
We were born to make you laugh. From our humble beginnings in 1983 at the Saint-Denis Theatre in Montreal to laughing our way to become the largest global player in the humour industry, we’ve made funny our business.
Each year we make millions of people laugh with festivals at home, in Montreal and abroad. We’re home to some serious talent. We’ve hosted comedy’s greatest and watched up-and-comers skyrocket right before our laugh-so-hard-we’re crying eyes. We’ve staged our own comedy, musical and touring shows. We’ve broadcasted digital and television content.
We know how to throw a party. And we’re not even close to leaving the spotlight.
https://montreal.hahaha.com/en
Operations Coordinator; MacKenzie Poole
May - July 2022
BESTIARIUM
From one evocative creature to another a strange, yet strangely familiar, universe silently unfolds. Through a series of astonishing metamorphoses, extraordinary images draw a vast moving fresco in perpetual transformation. Before our eyes the giant knits become a matrix of infinite possibilities.
http://www.y2d-shows.com/bestiarium.html
TD (see also video); MacKenzie Poole
F T A 2 0 2 1
The Festival Trans Amériques, or the FTA, is a festival of contemporary dance and theatre.
+ The FTA is a harbinger of springtime in Montreal. Kicking off the summer season in late May, the Festival presents an average of 25 shows in performance venues and in outdoor public spaces over a two-week period.
+ The FTA takes place in some 15 venues, from downtown locales in the entertainment district like Place des Arts and the Monument National, to theatres in other neighbourhoods such as Usine C, Espace Libre and Théâtre ESPACE GO.
Technical Assistant: MacKenzie Poole
April - July 2021
T H E R O V E R
A 2017 retelling of the Aphra Behn classic "The Rover".
As pointed out by Tadeusz Bradecki, director of "The Rover" by the graduating class of the National Theatre School of Canada, Behn had to accept the world as it was. Her men are brutal and violent, but the women smarter, so instead of complaining they enter the game of sex and power, often prevailing. This led to complaints in her day of bawdiness. But bawdiness sells, and even though she eventually died in poverty, she made a decent living for some years.
Aphra became the only female playwright of that period, 1600s, whose works have survived until this day.
Assistant technical director; MacKenzie Poole
GLOB
Deux personnages étranges apparaissent sur scène.
Ils sont touffus, doux et sans âge.
Arriveront-ils à savoir où ils sont… et où ils vont ?
Ils attendent… qui ? Ou quoi ?
Ils attendent que la vie passe, en cherchant quoi faire…
Ils prennent le temps de regarder l’autre, de rire, de pleurer, de monter et de redescendre… mais ils prennent surtout le temps de prendre le temps.
Les surprises de la vie leur indiqueront peut-être quoi faire et où aller…
Un spectacle rempli de surprises, de douceur de cirque et de moments magiques !
https://lesfoutoukours.com/fr/glob/
Technical director; MacKenzie Poole
November 2021 - April 2022
L I E N S / T I E S
A 2021 Co-pro between NTS and Rose Plotek.
More information to be announced.
Technical director; MacKenzie Poole
May - October 2021

N U I T R O U G E
A 2020 off festival event between NUIT BLANCHE and NTS.
The artists of the National Theatre School’s (NTS) Indigenous Artists in Residence program present NUIT ROUGE at the Monument-National. An evening of storytelling and its various forms featuring Todd Houseman and Wahsontí:io Kirby, Sylvia Cloutier and Geronimo Inutiq, Soleil Launière as well as the drum and song group Odaya and visual artist Nico Williams.
Technical director; MacKenzie Poole
N E W W O R D S
A 2019 production featuring two new plays performed in rep.
The New Words Festival is the culminating project of the graduating class of the National Theatre School of Canada’s English Section. Two brand-new, never-before-produced plays run in repertory during the students’ final week at the School, just days before graduation. Written and realized by graduating students, the plays produced at the New Words Festival mark the end of the students’ formal training and the beginning of their professional careers. A showcase for exciting new talent, New Words is particularly poignant for the playwrights whose plays reach the public for the very first time during their tenure at NTS.
Technical director; MacKenzie Poole