Sarah Deshaies produces the Andrew Carter Morning Show. Every Friday at 8:20am, she tells you about the big, quirky and off-the-beaten-path events happening in Montreal. Here is this week's list, with links for more information so you can get out and enjoy the city! Submit your event to sarah.deshaies@bellmedia.ca.
The 17th edition of Sketchfest has just kicked off, with a mix of solo and group “scripted” comedy from Montreal and beyond. Each show has three acts, and there are five rolling this weekend, including a franco showcase Saturday, 7pm. See Montreal solo act Real Live Doll and Toronto’s Potato Potato, Friday 8pm, followed by Lady Fingers and Bring Your Own Juice at 10pm. The fest continues at Theatre Ste Catherine until May 11.
Participating restaurants will vye for fan approval during La Pizza Week. Try La Piazzetta’s shrimp, curry, and butternut sauce pizza downtown, Tomate Basilic’s fig, salami and spicy honey pizza and George Le Roi du Sous-Marin Longueuil’s concoction, with cheddar, mozzarella, Philly steak, onions, creamy sauce and dill pickles. Until Tuesday.
The Montreal Planetarium’s new show imagines what human life could like on Mars.. in 2100! With help from NASA aerospace engineer Farah Alibay and celebrated troupe Cirque Éloize, ROUGE 2100 explores the environment of the red planet as well as what astronauts would need to survive. You’ll have the A-I bot Felicity 87, to take you through the immersive exhibit.
Open-air vendors return to the Atwater, Jean-Talon and Maisonneuve markets this weekend! (Neighbourhood markets will also be opening up.) Shop local produce, and enjoy food on a terrasse, as the market’s outdoor eateries open up. Special programming is coming up through the spring and summer.
Two-wheeled fun at the third edition of Festival Vélocité, with races, vendors, demos of news sports bikes - and something called a “brunch roulant”! Kids aged 6 to 16 will race on Saturday, followed by an elite race on Sunday. All weekend at Parc Jean-Drapeau.
Opéra de Montréal launches Verdi’s La Traviata on Saturday. Courtesan Violetta has been transformed as a jazz entertainer in 1920s Paris. Can she and her lover, Alberto, find a way to live out their romance despite societal and family pressure? Until May 14 at Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier.
Go behind the scenes with Shakespeare’s heroines in Thy Woman’s Weeds, a new work by Montreal playwright Erin Shields. Seven stellar local actresses incarnate characters like Lady MacBeth, Goneril, Juliet and Ophelia as we weave between the stage and wings. This is a savvy, smart and galloping romp! Stepping in as director, Shakespeare-in-the-Park’s Amanda Kellock unpicks the patriarchal worlds the Bard built for his female characters, at the Centaur until May 12.
Hit Broadway play An Act of God has the big guy upstairs setting the record straight on a few things! The show was sparked by a popular, long-running account “operated” by the Abrahamic god, and the script was “transcribed” by Daily Show writer and producer David Javerbaum, a multiple Emmy laureate. Brave New Theatre’s take has founder Donald Rees in the big role, with archangel support from the very funny Steph McKenna and Nir Guzinski. Friday and Saturday, 8pm at MainLine Theatre.
Friday’s music picks: British metalcore band Architects perform with Of Mice and Men and While She Sleeps, Friday and Saturday, 7pm at MTelus. Fellow Brit, rapper Giggs performs at Beanfield Theatre, 8pm. A specialist in Arabic club music, DJ Habibeats starts the party at the Fairmount, 10pm. Creedence Clearwater Revival cover band CCR Reborn at the Wheel Club in NDG, 8pm.
Saturday’s music picks: Two shows at the Fairmount: British influencer cover band Punk Rock Factory interpret everything from punk to Disney ballads, 7pm, followed by LA-based electronic DJ Cassian at Fairmount Theatre, 10pm.
Sunday’s music picks: Berber poet Lounis Aït Menguellet performs at L’Olympia, 2pm. Hip-hop artist Tif performs the first of two shows at Club Soda, 9pm. Nuits d’Afrique continues its series of weekend concerts, Les Cabarets Acoustique, including Julien LePolyglotte, a multi-instrumentalist who plays Portuguese stringed instrument called the cavaquinho, guitar and piano, to name a few instruments, as he melds different genres together. He’ll be onstage 9pm Saturday at Club Balattou.
Robbie Hart’s new documentary Nos Amours: The Saga of the Expos is his second look at the city’s love affair with the baseball team. Here, Hart looks at efforts to bring back pro baseball to the city, starting in 2012. The doc begins screening at Cinéma du Musée and Cinema Guzzo this weekend.
Festival Accès Asie celebrates myriad art forms by Asian artists and informed by Asian traditions. For opening weekend, check out cellist Fili 周 Gibbons’s performance of Steps of Yu. This music and movement piece recounts the Great Flood in ancient China, at OBORO New Media Laboratory, 4001 Berri, Saturday at 2pm and 3:30pm.
The Montreal Holocaust Museum will hold a remembrance event for Holocaust and Heroism Remembrance Day, on Sunday, 7pm at the Gelber Conference Centre.
Our friend Jason Devine hosts his annual Kentucky Derby Party. View the race, mint julep in hand, in a festive atmosphere. Prizes will be handed out to the best-dressed! Saturday 4 to 7pm at Bishop & Bagg in Mile End.
One of our favourite Montreal comics, the wild-haired TV star Mike Paterson headlines at The Comedy Nest, with support from the likes of Elspeth Wright, Oren Shbiro, Marianne Mandrusiak and more! Mike will be recording for his upcoming album, FBC: Fat Bald and Confident. Friday and Saturday, 8 and 10:30pm.
Montreal Improv in St Henri marks its anniversary with Cheers! a festive improv show with The Actors' Lounge and Too Sick Bro, among others, Friday 9:30pm.
At burlesque headquarters The Wiggle Room: owner Frenchy Jones hosts Cabaret! Friday, 9pm with The Lady Josephine, Miami Minx, SugarPuss and Zyra Lee Vanity. Then, Saturday, at 9pm for “Star Wars Day”: May the Tease Be With You! with Zyra Lee Vanity, Enshantay, Sucre à la Creme, Bellamie Beasty and Olivia Killjoy. (And if you love the intersection of burlesque and Star Wars, consider booking now for the touring show The Empire Strips Back, which returns to Montreal for the second this year, at the Rialto, June 5-16). Back to the Wiggle Room, which holds a bonus show on Sunday, 7:30pm, to raise funds to send Montreal dancers to Burlesque Hall of Fame in Vegas.
Nova Hudson is raising money for the rebuilding fund for the historic St James Church, which was devastated by a fire last month. All proceeds at Maison Nova and Boutique Nova will be donated on Saturday, 10am to 4pm.
Check out a Book Browse at the Montreal West United Church, at 88 Ballantyne on Saturday from 9:30 to 3pm.
Last call! Immersive Disney Animation spotlights House of Mouse characters and music, including movies like Frozen, The Lion King and The Little Mermaid. At Arsenal Contemporary Gallery until Saturday.
ONGOING EVENTS
Pointe-À-Callière Museum has launched a first-in-Canada show, Olmecs and the Civilizations of the Gulf of Mexico Explore 4,000 years of Olmec history through nearly 300 objects, some of which will be seen for the first time by the public. What’s fascinating is that traces of the Olmecs were not really “discovered” until the 1800s. This show, a collaboration with Mexico’s Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, runs until September 15.
Explore the beauty and diversity of our natural world in Root for Nature. This new, 90-minute show is a “nature hike” indoors, conceived as a powerful piece of edutainment inspired by the COP15 biodiversity talks hosted by Montreal in late 2022. This collaboration between National Geographic and OASIS Immersive Studios will take place in the same location as the UN conference, at the Palais des congrès. Also at the venue: Dreaming of Asia is a stunning exploration of Chinese and Japanese culture, making its North American premiere at OASIS Immersions. French digital art studio Danny Rose has crafted four different experiences, including a look at shadow puppet theatre.
The Horizon of Khufu: A Journey in Ancient Egypt is a virtual reality experience that brings you into the giant pyramid in Giza, a 146-metre high pyramid built nearly 3,000 years before the Common era. Noted Egyptologist Peter Der Manuelian will be your guide. Studio PHI has brought in this for a North American first. Until May 31, in the Old Port at 2 rue de la Commune.
The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts explores how nature inspired two great artists of the 20th cetury. Georgia O’Keefe and Henry Moore: Giants of Modern Art is an exhibit curated by the San Diego Museum of Art; it recreates both artists’ studios down to minute detail. Admire O’Keefe bodacious flowers and landscapes, contrasted with Moore’s sculptures inspired by stones and bones, and his Helmet heads. Until June 2.
The McCord Stewart Museum’s excellent and informative Indigenous Voices of Today: Knowledge, Trauma, Resilience. The show profiles the 11 nations living within the borders of Quebec, with testimonies and carefully curated objects. Two of the McCord’s current shows include Becoming Montreal is about the depictions of the city in the 1800s, and Wampum: Beads of diplomacy, which displays over 40 wampum belts from different collections, underscoring their symbolism and history.
Visit the city’s newest museum: Centre des Mémoires Montréalaises promises to capture the metropois’ history and citizens. Check out the vintage neon signs at the entrance, and look for the colourful balls that once decorated Ste-Catherine in the Gay Village. There are two exhibition up now: a lookback at the 90 years of Le Chaînon, the women’s shelter and resource centre, and Détours, which focuses on hidden corners of the city. Located at 1201 St Laurent.