Montreal s Just For Laughs to feature mix of live and online shows this summer Considered one of the world s most important comedy festivals, last year’s event was online only and ran in late September, early October.
Author of the article: Brendan Kelly • Montreal Gazette
Publishing date: May 05, 2021 • 4 hours ago • 3 minute read • The advantage we have in comedy is we can do a first-class event online, Just for Laughs president Bruce Hills said. Photo by Dave Sidaway /Montreal Gazette
Reviews and recommendations are unbiased and products are independently selected. Postmedia may earn an affiliate commission from purchases made through links on this page.
Article content
Last week saw big news for Jean-Drapeau Park: The city of Montreal has expansive recovery plans to turn it into a major green urban hub for Montrealers by 2030. How expansive? A high line promenade, Quebec’s first green urban bridge, increased waterfront and canal access, huge urban parks, water ferry reception halls, wetland integration the list goes on. The plan for intensified greening of Île Notre-Dame and Île Ste-Hélène into more than expansive sites for festivals, however, has already started to meet opposition from events like Osheaga. There are 31 sites in total that are expected to see changes. Some of those are repairs and renovations to sites including that $45 million earmarked for the Biosphere but Montrealers can understand those changes through 10 major facelifts.
Article content
If Nick Farkas had thought there was any way Evenko could’ve held Osheaga this summer, he would’ve gone ahead with it. But Farkas senior vice-president of concerts and booking at Evenko and his colleagues simply couldn’t make it work given the restrictions caused by the pandemic.
“I’m super disappointed,” Farkas said in a phone interview on Thursday. “We held out as long as we could to try to do it this year. We really felt (a while back) with what was happening in the U.K. and in the States that there was a shot at doing something in a few months. But there was just no clear path forward unfortunately, with the variants being so unpredictable. We just ran out of time. So we’re disappointed as all hell but we’re resilient and we’ll come back and crush it in 2022.”