With the sun slowly creeping up to a healthy, normal level, I'm feeling myself normalize as well. In fact, everyone’s got more pep in their step, both colour and pattern have returned to store shelves, and people are posting their first ice cream runs (jackets notwithstanding).

Anachnid is an award-winning Indigenous interdisciplinary artist whose work spans electronic music, costume design, and traditional weaving. A celebrated voice in the Montreal scene, they blend intuitive hand-drum textures with progressive electro to create a "captivating and seductive universe" rooted in the land.

We went out to vape and smoke a joint before the show, leaving our jackets inside. The cold wind made me giddy (uncomfortable, but giddy). It felt like cigs in high school when I didn't want to get my jacket from my locker. It felt like late nights I hoped wouldn't end that had started as early days, and I was dressed for the sun.

In a city that often tries to polish burlesque into a sanitized, corporate-friendly product for the tourist agenda, Mina Minou is throwing a massive wrench into the machine. As a multidisciplinary artist with over a decade of skin in the game, she’s the architect of The Fool’s Journey, a sprawling, five-show competition series that ditches the “prettiness" of traditional pageantry for a chaotic blend of radical absurdity and experimental play.

Kristin Govers is an Île-Perrot-based writer, performer, and founder of Two Left Feet Productions MTL, whose acclaimed debut, The Awkward Ballerina, has been produced over 20 times across North America. A dedicated advocate for inclusivity and accessibility, she is currently adapting her stage work for film while preparing for the August premiere of her new one-woman show, Pregnant… And It’s Still Awkward!

For immigrants who’ve settled within these colonial North American borders, there is a constant tension between what one wants to say and how (if at all) to say it.  “You have to be really careful,” says Lebanese-Canadian actor and cultural practitioner Basma Baydoun. “You know, hide your rage, hide your anger – hide how you feel about injustice.

It's been said in uh, places (gestures vaguely), that authenticity is the new currency. That people have hit their saturation point for curated POVs, and staged smiles, and now anything less than the raw and real gives us the heebie jeebies.

If you step inside Turbo Haus on a Wednesday night, there’s three things that you’re guaranteed to find: good music, good people, and a good time. Once you make your way past the bar and near to the stage, you’ll be able to enjoy some of the best musical talent that Montreal has to offer with a crowd that always brings the right energy.

For many years, I considered myself low maintenance. Well, I was repeatedly told I was low maintenance, which was cast in a positive light, and I began to see myself that way. Guys called me that. I didn't have the same requirements or expectations that they, well, expected.

Thanks to a Lyft referral discount, I arrived at the Segal Centre just in time for Contact Theatre’s Falsettos. Most of the audience was already seated by the time I stepped into the venue and claimed my preferred back row seat.