Montreal welcomes festival season as COVID-19 restrictions ease
Event promoters hope border, capacity rules are lifted by next year
MONTREAL — In downtown Montreal, it’s festival season.
In the city’s entertainment district, a musical act was conducting a sound check on stage Friday evening — the second day of the French-language version of the renowned Just For Laughs comedy festival. Tickets for many of the festival’s free outdoor shows — limited by COVID-19 regulations — were sold out.
Two blocks away, more than 100 people were watching an acoustic performance by the Isaac Neto Trio — part of the last weekend of the Festival International Nuits d’Afrique, a celebration of music from the African continent and the African diaspora.
With COVID-19 restrictions continuing to limit capacity, festival organizers say they’re glad to be back, but looking forward to next year when they hope border restrictions and capacity limits won’t affect their plans.
Charles Décarie, Just For Laughs’ CEO and president, said this is a “transition year.”
“Even though we have major constraints from the public health group in Montreal, we’ve managed to design a festival that can navigate through those constraints,” Décarie said.
The French-language Juste pour rire festival began on Thursday and is followed by the English-language festival until July 31.
When planning began in February and March, Décarie said, organizers came up with a variety of scenarios for different crowd sizes, ranging from no spectators to 50 per cent of usual capacity.
“You’ve got to build scenarios,” he said. “You do have to plan a little bit more than usual because you have to have alternatives.”
As in the past, the festivals include both ticketed indoor shows and free outdoor performances. Outside, there will be fewer stages and smaller crowds than in years past, Décarie said. Indoor performances will run at 30 per cent capacity, while outdoor shows will have around 10 to 20 per cent of their pre-pandemic capacity.
“Normally, we get about one million people during the festivals over 15 days, and this year, we would be happy to have 200,000 people visiting us over the next couple weeks,” Décarie said.
Quebec’s COVID-19 restrictions limit outdoor events to a maximum capacity of 5,000 people, who must be divided into separate sections of 500 people. Indoor events are capped at 3,500 spectators, who must sit in sections of 250 people, with separate entrances and washrooms for each section.
Due to the border restrictions, which Décarie describes as a “massive concern,” some performances are being filmed in New York and Los Angeles and will be streamed online.
“That’s how we’ve been able to reach out to international talent,” he said. “We’ve decided to change the way we proceed, and we went to them.”
Other Montreal festivals also say they plan to work around the border restrictions by focusing on local talent.
The Festival International Nuits d’Afrique is featuring local artists and drawing on recorded performances from previous years, Suzanne Rousseau, the festival’s managing director and co-founder, said.
“The first nights, especially, were amazing,” she said of the festival. “The artists were saying it’s my first show in front of a live audience in a year and a half.”
The festival’s outdoor component consists of two smaller “cabaret” stages, Rousseau said. Instead of a main stage, there is a sound and light show projected on a building, including video performances from the festival’s 35-year history.
Décarie said he’s optimistic about the future of festivals in Montreal, adding that people “have an appetite to be out there, to celebrate summer in the city.”
“We’re excited,” he said. “We’re back.”