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.
There is still time to sign up for Go Bike Montréal Festival’s two big cycling events this weekend! Friday’s Tour La Nuit is a 24-kilometre ride, where participants often dress up with costumes and lights. Sunday morning’s Tour de l’Île offers different routes, ranging from 28 to 96 kilometres. Both circuits start and depart at Jeanne Mance Park in the Plateau, where there will be family-friendly programming and snacks. Don’t have a bike? Consider borrowing, renting or grabbing a Bixi. And if you want to avoid the many, many road closures, consult the maps here.
Cirque du soleil’s steampunk extravaganza Kurios: Cabinet of Curiosities is back! Step into the Seeker’s wondrous, funny world, filled with contortionists and acrobats! Kurios is at the Big Top in Old Montreal until August 25.
Les Grand Ballets performs artistic director Ivan Cavallari’s vision of Giselle, the ultimate romantic ballet. Created in 1841 for the Opéra de Paris, the story of young peasant girl Giselle and her love triangle has inspired fans and artists around the world. In a pastoral Rhineland, Giselle falls for Albrecht, an aristocrat who has hidden his identity. When she discovers he is already engaged, she dies - and returns as a Wilis, a group of spirits seeking vengeance.The ‘ballet blanc’ of the ghostly girls is sumptuous, with the dancers dressed in identical, bell-shaped skirts. The enchantment and romance continues at Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier, until Sunday
Festival TransAmériques brings you moving, eclectic depictions of modern dance and theatre from around the world. A variety of works will round out the last few days of the Festival, including the premiere of Anishinaabe choreographer Lara Kramer’s new work, Gorgeous Tongue, Friday 9pm at Édifice Wilder.
The FTA also presents two lengthy shows that trade on audience interaction: In asses.masses, by a Vancouver-based duo who create shared video games experiences, the audience watches as members play a donkey in a game, projected on a large screen. The show runs for over seven hours (with four intermissions - snacks provided!) and wraps when the game ends. At Centaur Theatre, Saturday 2pm. See a woman build a tiny home, in public in the fascinating I Am From Reykjavik. Manchester poet Sonia Hughes makes her art slowly, and powerfully, with the public invited to watch and even interact with her process. This is first time the show will be performed in North America! Saturday at Lafontaine Park, Sunday at Morgan Park. Sonia begins at 11am.
Take a walk downtown to look out for 15 giant pink sculptures! Le Mignonisme is a series of sculptures known as Monsieur Rose, from the mind of artist Philippe Katerine. You’ll find them along an art walk downtown, including the Quartier des Spectacles and Place des Arts to the Esplanade PVM at Place Ville Marie and Phillips Square. Until September 29.
Final call to see Selina Fillinger’s 2021 play POTUS, or Behind Every Great Dumba** Are Seven Women Trying To Keep Him Alive. It’s a fast-paced farce in which the Leader of the Free World kicks off a crisis with a four-letter-word. While the President remains (mostly) offstage, we gaze upon the constellation of women around him, including hyper-competent secretary Stephanie (Katherine Fitch), his mistress (effervescent Kayleigh Choiniere) and his sister Bernadette (comic Elvira Kurt). Make sure to listen for a very special CJAD cameo - or two! Until Sunday.
Tableau D’Hôte’s Caravan is a road trip across Canada in 1970, as an unlikely trio of three women venture eastward, each with different motivations. This brand new play by Anna Burke is about the fight to legalize abortion in the country, but it’s also about learning to find your way in the world. Groovy animations and set design, coupled with groovy radio, anchor this story at a powerful time for women’s rights. At Monument National until Sunday.
The Cote Saint Luc Dramatic Society is putting on Stephen Sondheim’s Tony-winning fairy tale odyssey Into the Woods. A baker and his wife desire a child, and following a witch’s instructions, they venture into a forest, where they meet other characters of fairy tale lore, like Cinderella and Red Riding Hood. Until Sunday at the Harold Greenspon Auditorium.
Off Piknic has programmed two dance-worthy days at Parc Jean Drapeau: on Friday, Masked DJ Marshmello headlines Produkt in the Park, with Viperactive and Pluko, 4 to 10pm. On Saturday, Electronic label All Day I Dream programs a 4pm lineup that includes Lost Desert and Tim Green.
Friday’s music picks: Progressive metalcore band ERRA brings their Cure North America tour, with Make Them Suffer, Void of Vision and Novelists, at Beanfield, 7pm. Toronto indie band Good Kid at Le Studio TD, 8pm. Mississippi blues guitarist and wunderkind Christone ''Kingfish'' Ingram at le National, 8pm. Glaswegian indie group Camera Obscura at Fairmount Theatre, 8pm.
Saturday’s music picks:Colombian singer FEID, a longtime songwriter behind the scenes, continues to seize the main stage, hitting up the Bell Centre, 8pm. Kabyle artist Ali Amran at L’Olympia, 8pm.
Sunday: Algerian raï singer Cheb Bilal lights up L’Olympia, 7pm.
Final chance to head over to the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts for Georgia O’Keefe and Henry Moore: Giants of Modern Art, 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 Sunday.
Seasoned standup and host of Funny as Hell Jon Dore headlines The Comedy Nest with support from the likes of Hisham Kelati , Wassim El-Mounzer, Lawrence Corber and more! Friday and Saturday, 8 and 10:30pm.
The Montreal Fringe Festival launched earlier this week, with live, DIY theatre, dance and more from Montreal and all around the world. While most of the shows kick off next week, the adjacent After Dark programming has you covered: The Strip Spelling Bee returns Friday, 9pm at MainLine. (Attendees are asked to mask.) Spoken word legend jem rolls makes his 20th visit to Montreal with The Kid Was A Spy, an hour-long show about a young American who participated in the Manhattan Project. If you loved Oppenheimer (the movie and/or book) you’ll enjoy this look into the making of the Atomic bomb. Sunday, 4pm and Monday, 8pm at MainLine Theatre.
Montreal Improv in St Henri hosts a medley of shows, including Buddies, Friday 9:30pm about living with roommates and ‘other living arrangements’.
At burlesque headquarters The Wiggle Room, host and owner Frenchy Jones is hosting: Friday, 9pm is 1920s vibes with Gatsby! with Lily Monroe, Celesta O’Lee, Elle Diablo and Minx Arcana. Then, Saturday, at 9pm: From funny to classic to nerdy, Varietease is a medley of burlesque styles with Yikes Macaroni, Tristan Ginger, Sucre a La Creme and Zyra Lee Vanity. And - yeehaw! Howdy, Kings is a cowboy-themed drag king evening, Sunday 7:30pm.
The Barreau de Montréal is marking 175 years by offering two free days of legal consultations - no appointments needed. Friday, noon to 1pm and Saturday, 9:30 to 4:30pm at Marché Bonsecours.
St Michael & All Angels Church in Pierrefonds holds their spring fair and barbecue, including their famed jarbola fundraiser! Peruse a variety of goods, including preserves, crafts and treats while taking a chance on the jarbola. Saturday, 10am to 3pm, at 15556 Cabot, corner Jacques Bizard.
ONGOING EVENTS
At the Botanical Gardens, the clematis are starting to bloom, while the primrsoses and peonies are flowering. Check out the other blooms of the week here
Nearby, 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.
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 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 exhibitions 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.