Features

01. Happy Hillside is a common greeting at the festival.

The thirty-fourth edition of Hillside Music Festival took place over the July 16th weekend. Taking place over three days in the scenic Guelph Island Lake, this edition of the festival holds up with the best acts and lives up to its history of over thirty years. The theme this year at Hillside was resistance.

It is through resistance that we can build stronger communities and stronger bonds. We must resist the lines of thinking that tell us to separate ourselves along gender or racial lines, or that tell us we’re too different to get along.

Canada’s sweetheart Debra DiGiovanni made her 9th appearance at The Just For Laughs Festival with her hilarious solo show at Place des Arts! DiGiovanni provides her audiences with an energetic hour of delightfully dark, self-deprecating humour. DiGiovanni enthusiastically delivers such vivid, relatable jokes that will make you laugh so hard you’ll cry!

In honour of tomorrow’s Canada 150 celebration, CJLO will be airing documentaries from the National Campus and Community Radio Association’s Resonating Reconciliation, a project that engages community radio to help reconcile all Canadians with the history of Indian Residential Schools. The broadcast will take place today from 11 AM until 5 PM. The full schedule is posted below.

There is No I In Fail is “an anti-motivational comedy” about lowering your expectations that is extremely heartwarming and exceeds all expectations! Trent Baumann’s Australian one-man show is one of the most uplifting performances you’ll have the pleasure of seeing at this year’s edition of the Montreal Fringe Festival. With balloons, milk crates, newspaper and an original soundtrack by the lovely Japanese composer Sachie, Baumann will charm you to pieces!

One Too Many is a two-person play rife with symbolism and inner reflection. It challenges the way we look at excessive alcohol consumption and questions our behaviour once we’ve had one too many drinks. Based on their life and experiences, Evan and Calla confront their own complicated relationships with alcohol and explore their varying alcohol dependencies with the audience. It is a must-see if you want to better understand the struggle of substance abusers.

Having been lucky enough to discuss the play with the artists, I can provide some insight into their thought process, their vision and their message (ATTENTION: spoilers ahead!).

Cabaret Abnormal is a mysterious showcase of Montreal’s sexiest burlesque and circus performers! Organized by Viva Diverse Productions, Cabaret Abnormal stars director and dark beauty Mikki Michelle, the madly alluring Magenta Haze, and the dangerously beautiful Tristan Ginger!

Jazz music, incessant cigarette smoking, murder—this piece of detective fiction has it all! Everything that comes to mind from a murder mystery set in the 20s, right down to the pinstriped suites and showgirls, The Detective, The Dame and The Devil has it. What it also has in addition to your standard detective story staples are lame puns, cheap gags, and running jokes that give the whole show fantastic continuity. It was perfect. Small details revealed at the beginning of the show were easy to pass off as mere silliness, but so often they would tie into the plot in unexpected and incredibly silly ways, making the whole show completely hilarious and impressively well thought out. Throw in some plot twists and we have a winner!