Eight years of laughter
and creative circus fun
Amusement knows no bounds at the 8th Montreal Clown Festival
By Sophie Jama
April 6, 2025 • Translated from French
The Montreal Clown Festival takes center stage for its eighth edition – eight years of pioneering the burlesque territories of a foundational art long relegated to the shadows of grand spectacles. Direct heir to acrobatic parody and pre-Shakespearean pantomime, this event reclaims the clown, the historical figure of the big top, from the dazzling acts that monopolize attention.
At the heart of circus tradition, it draws from classical circus DNA – clumsy tightrope walkers, drunken Auguste clowns parodying lion tamers – to celebrate the art of comedic counterpoint. Parades of red noses and silent gags coexist with contemporary explorations, where the “new clown” dares raw vulnerability, far from the tropes of easy laughter.
Under the fragmented big top of Montreal’s venues, the program blends frenetic cabarets, clownish improvisations, and free family acts, embodying a dual spirit: homage to the white clowns of yore and a laboratory for borderless physical expression. Local artists and international troupes reinvent the eternal dialogue between grotesque and sublime, proving the clown remains the secret soul of the circus – that warped mirror where humanity recognizes itself, caught between spectacular pratfalls and the grace of failure.
Clowns do not fear ridicule. They are tender and full of love, even in their rages and bad moods.
Laughter’s Alchemy
Clowns are these maskless beings who dance with ridicule as their partner. Embodied tenderness, they distill love even in their theatrical rages, transforming bad moods into poetic pirouettes. Their laughter echoes like childhood trapped in clumsy adult bodies, fallen kings of an imaginary realm where rags become gold and wine stains turn to precious embroidery.
Virtuosos of paradox collect professions like stringing mad beads: singers with broken voices, disjointed dancers, tellers of true lies, jugglers who drop balls on purpose, failed magicians revealing their tricks, chatty mimes and bumbling acrobats—every failure is a victory over the world’s seriousness.
Their genius lies in disarming predictability, masking ruthless mechanics: every calculated misstep, every millimeter-perfect grimace triggers knowing laughter. Behind postures of fallen majesty lurk flaws that mirror ours – and therein lies their magic. They hold up a warped mirror where our vulnerabilities become strengths, where imperfection transforms into grace, dancing on the tightrope of emotions, turning their dented humanity into a fairground where crying and laughing become one.
Amarrable Foutiyayaa • image: Jean-Michel-Duclos
This microcosm of reasonable fools draws strength from ritualized self-mockery. Their acts, balancing hidden feats and embraced vulnerabilities, redefine circus heroism: no longer about taming beasts, but about taming one’s own flaws. The audience, transformed into a warped mirror, recognizes in these red-nosed antiheroes the echo of their glorified stumbles. The ultimate jest: proving that clowning, far from being trivial, remains the beating heart of a circus daring to laugh at its essence.
Gala Cabaret
For its Gala Cabaret at Le Gesù, ten holy fools stormed the stage. One reigned as ringmaster, while the others, brooms in hand, transformed every intermission into burlesque acts – valet clowns polishing laughter’s relics between pratfalls. The packed house thrummed with universal laughter, a collective trance uniting all.
René Bazinet, a circus dandy in tails and top hat, transcends his MC role. This vocal tightrope walker blends operatic singing and clowning, a born raconteur whose every grimace sparks laughter’s lightning. His dance, equal parts clockwork precision and poetic flight, embodies the clown’s essence: that eternal high-wire act between grace and grotesque. When he mimes a hat-as-melody or parodies opera in clogs, the spirit of classical circus revives, dipped in mischievous modernity.
‘Everyone found their place in the show, with artists masterfully weaving individual callouts and collective participation into the fabric of the show.’
Steve Day, alias Amoeba, embodies magnified ephemerality – a man-balloon whose fragile adornments burst in comic symphony. His voice, as capricious as an escaped balloon, becomes an instrument in its own right. A virtuoso mime, he wordlessly unfurls silent epics, transforming a chicken coop into a burlesque odyssey where every wingbeat becomes choreographed slapstick.
Céline Jolin, her red nose screwed on like an ode to creative intoxication, juggles illusions. Do her phantom bottles spring from magic or shared mirages? The table becomes an alchemical lab where gin multiplies into metaphysical farce, defying even the laws of equilibrium. Her act – a perfect equation of feigned drunkenness and technical sobriety – blurs reality’s edges.
Miriam Heap-Lalonde, accordionist of medical deserts, composes a universal lament in a minor key. Each grating note becomes an absurd quest: the search for a family doctor transformed into bureaucratic opera buffa. Her counterpoint laughter, sharp as a lancet, inoculates collective catharsis. The audience, recognizing their administrative odysseys, laughs through tears – an exorcism rhythmically punctuated by her accomplice’s instrument.
Soirée Impro, Empire-Pagaille • image: David-Bélanger
Andrea Conway and Wayne Doba, alias Dik and Mitzi, form a tap-dancing duo where time accelerates into a burlesque waltz. Their frenzied soles crackle to the rhythm of imagined aging, each pirouette defying phantom wrinkles – human metronomes transforming wear into existential choreography.
Isaac Kessler, the one-man no-show, reigns as a mute tyrant. His marble face and jerky gestures become an invisible remote control, bending the audience to absurd commands. A clown imperator proving silence can scream louder than drums.
Philibert Hébert-Filion, alias Pat Ow, a derelict superhero, hides under his crumpled cape a genius for role reversal. His wobbly acrobatics, improbable juggling, and calculated pratfalls turn failure into triumph – each mishap a stepping stone to liberating laughter.
Myriam Sutton, as Katarin’Hair, wages an epic capillary battle. Rebellious curlers and wild strands morph into weapons of mass distraction, culminating in a revelation: her trichological crisis becomes a miracle cure for a balding spectator. Hair comedy where loss transforms into collective gain.
Shally Julie Messier, Bébé Jasette, embodies the eternal lost infant. Her disjointed babble and surprise diapers orchestrate an inverted parental quest: the entire audience, through complicit laughter, becomes adoptive family for a night.
This cohort of unhinged jesters, virtuosos of self-mockery, electrifies the room under a rain of laughter and ovations. Through their burlesque alchemy – where failure transmutes into grace and clumsiness into poetry – they embody the quintessence of a genre too often relegated to interlude status.
A mirror held to human vanity, their show reminds us that clowns remain the vital breath of authentic circus: one that dares laugh at its conventions while exalting the beauty of imperfection.
Montreal Clown Festival
The Montreal Clown Festival is an annual event celebrating clowning in all its diversity. From April 4 to 12, 2025, the festival unfolds primarily at the Gesù Theatre and in the Plateau, Mile End, and Villeray–Saint-Michel–Parc-Extension neighborhoods.
This 8th edition unveils a kaleidoscopic program: aerial galas where artists dance with stars, improvised evenings that both startle and enchant, and passionate discussions dissecting clown artistry. The closing night, Le Grand Imbécile, promises a delirious experience with rapid-fire performances and unscripted surprises – a whirlwind of laughter and magic.
Feature mage: OldGod – photo Emelia Hellman
Other reviews and critiques
Other recent articles
There are no comments
Add yours