Over at the Centaur Theatre, local playwright Colleen Curran’s True Nature puts in parallel the lives of a contemporary academic and the 19th-century palaeontologist Mary Anning (Oct. 4 to Nov. 6), and Roy Surette directs Yasmina Reza’s award-winning black comedy God of Carnage, which has also been adapted as a movie by Roman Polanski that will open before the end of the year (Nov. 8 to Dec. 4).

Elsewhere, the Processed Theatre company takes on Rebecca Feldman and William Finn’s hit musical The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee at Mainline Theatre (Sept. 6 to 24), Black Theatre Workshop presents the one-woman show Stori Ya at MAI (Nov. 16 to Dec. 4) and the cast of tree-planting comedy Ogoki Nights returns to Théâtre Ste-Catherine with sequel Halfway Between Chapleau and Wawa (Oct. 19 to 22).

Particularly promising is Ana, a bilingual co-production between Quebec’s Imago Theatre and Scotland’s Stellar Quines company, written by Pierre Yves Lemieux and Clare Duffy and directed by Serge Denoncourt, about a woman who adopts many identities as she travels through history. At Espace Go (Nov. 22 to Dec. 10).

Finally, at Place des Arts’ Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier, the Opéra de Montréal will present Mozart’s classic Le nozze di Figaro with soprano Nicole Cabell (Sept. 17 to 24), followed a couple of months later by Dvorak’s Rusalka with another soprano, Kelly Kaduce (Nov. 12 to 19).

"Just For Laughs is really a blast," says Yankovic over the phone from Buffalo, N.Y. "It’s a great assemblage of some of the greatest comics in the world and of up-and-comers. There are comedians all over the city just hanging out, working out their material and getting to know each other… It’s a great atmosphere and I’m really excited to be coming back."

This year, "Weird Al" will succeed Kevin Hearn, Craig Robinson, Reggie Watts and Beardyman as the host of Amp’d, Just For Laughs’ annual evening of music and comedy. "Everybody on the bill is somebody that I’m a big fan of. It should be a really, really fun show!" assures Yankovic, even though he doesn’t know much about the lineup yet beside the fact that it will feature Garfunkel & Oates, Tim Minchin, Bo Burnham, Reggie Watts and Tom Green. "I’ve worked out the songs that I’ll be performing, but I still have to talk to the producers about specifically the format of the show. I’ll be the host and one of the performers, but other than that, I’m kind of looking to them for direction!"

ALPOCALYPSE NOW

Each of "Weird Al" Yankovic’s albums, it seems, is like a time capsule of pop culture from the moment it was released. Alpocalypse is no different, with its spoofs of hits by Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift, Miley Cyrus, Bruno Mars and T.I., plus tons more (Britney Spears, Justin Bieber, Katy Perry, etc.) in Polka Face, his latest accordion-driven medley. "For a lot of my fans that don’t follow pop culture very closely, it’s sort of a Cliffs Notes of artists that were popular in the last few years," he says.

Even though his parodies can be sharply satirical, they never feel needlessly mean-spirited. "I try to be funny without being mean about it," Yankovic concurs. "I’ll take a good-natured poke every once in a while, but it’s all coming from a very tongue-in-cheek place. That’s one of the reasons why artists have been quick to allow me to do my parodies. Most artists look at it as a badge of honour."

Case in point: Lady Gaga, whose persona "Weird Al" perfectly sends up in Perform This Way, ended up giving high praise to it, despite initial reports that she had refused to give her consent for the parody. "You have to assume that somebody that goes out in public dressed in meat has to have a pretty good sense of humour!" quips Yankovic.

A lot of "Weird Al" songs aren’t straight parodies, but original songs that borrow the general style of an artist, like Genius in France and Pancreas, respectively pastiches of Frank Zappa and Brian Wilson. "Those are really fun to do, but they’re more of a challenge because I have to pick apart the oeuvre of an artist, figure out what exactly makes them tick and try to incorporate those points. My parodies have gotten the most attention from mainstream audiences, but I think the hardcore fans actually enjoy the originals even more."

One such original off Alpocalypse is Craigslist, a homage to The Doors that actually features Ray Manzarek on keyboards. "It really was one of the high points of my life to be able to work with him," says Yankovic. "It’s funny because a lot of people come up to me and say, ‘You sound so much like The Doors on Craigslist,’ and I’m like, ‘Well, yeah, it helps that Ray Manzarek is playing on it!’"

WHITE & NERDY

A top 10 single when it was released in 2006, White & Nerdy, a parody of Chamillionaire’s Ridin’, has also become Yankovic’s most watched video ever on YouTube, with more than 60 million views. To think that, less than a decade ago, he almost gave up on doing music videos!

"There was a period of time after MTV basically stopped playing music videos, up until when YouTube came out, when it almost didn’t make sense anymore to make music videos," he explains. "If they’re not going to be seen anywhere, why bother? But the Internet is sort of the new MTV, that’s where you go if you want to see a video."

When he heard White & Nerdy, Chamillionaire actually gave props to "Weird Al" about his rapping. "That blew my mind!" remembers Yankovic, who has also emulated MC Hammer, Coolio, Puff Daddy and Eminem in the past. "I’m pretty shameless, I’ll try anything, but to get that kind of compliment from somebody as respected as Chamillionaire really meant a lot to me."

Compliments should also be paid to Yankovic’s musicians, who have a real knack for recreating the sound of the artists that "Weird Al" parodies. "People say, ‘Oh, it’s a comedy band, how good could they possibly be?’ But they do every genre imaginable, from polka to gangsta rap, and they pull it off really well. It’s nice when people can see it live and realize that there’s a lot of talent behind the silliness!"

Amp’d hosted by "Weird Al" Yankovic

Just For Laughs at Club Soda

July 28, 7 & 10 p.m.

www.hahaha.com

"The acrobats have all grown up together," says director Scott Maidment over the phone from Bogotá, Colombia, where Tom Tom Crew will perform next year. "They all went to circus school together, they trained together, and now they’re touring the world together. So the bond between them is a very close bond."

The creative director of Strut & Fret Production House, Maidment had worked with all the performers in Tom Tom Crew separately before bringing them all together, acting as a matchmaker of sorts. "I decided it would be great to make a show using all their individual skills," he says. "They practically met for the first time on the stage – it was just three hours before the first show that they met, as we made a running order like a band would make a setlist."

That quasi-improvised inaugural performance, which took place at the 2006/07 Woodford Folk Festival, was such a big success that Tom Tom Crew has been touring the world ever since. "[The performers] are not characters; there’s no makeup, no costumes," points out the director. "They’re just themselves on stage, with the raw energy of the acrobats and the raw energy of the percussion. That’s what people have been loving."

Even though it caught on right away, the show has evolved over the years. "It keeps changing all the time, [based on] seeing what the audience likes best and creating new music and new acrobatic routines. That’s what has kept the show fresh. If we’d made a show five years ago and still did exactly the same thing, the performers would be bored and the audience would be bored too."

HIP-HOP CIRCUS?

Tom Tom Crew has been described as "Stomp meets Cirque du Soleil" and, even more often, as a "hip-hop circus." A label Scott Maidment feels ambivalent about. "Well," he laughs, "people always try to categorize the show. Some part of it is circus and some part of it is hip hop, but we also use a lot of different styles of music. Ben Walsh is very interested in Japanese drumming, and Indian rhythms are also used. But there is, of course old-school 80s hip hop in the show as well. So if you have to classify the show, I guess ‘hip-hop circus’ would do!"

The most distinctive thing about Tom Tom Crew might be the way the acrobats and the musicians interact, each side responding to what the other is doing. "It’s almost like a three-way conversation between the acrobatics, the music and then the audience," says Maidment. "I wanted to create a show where it wasn’t just a passive experience. The audience gets really involved, and the more they do, the better show they get."

Because of the audience interaction and the use of hip hop, the show tends to reach a different, younger, more urban audience than traditional circus. "We wanted to make a show that would be enjoyed by people who might go to a nightclub, go see a band live or go see a DJ, but who usually don’t go to the circus or to the theatre," explains Maidment, who singles out beatboxer Tom Thum as one of Tom Tom Crew’s main attractions. "You haven’t seen anything until you’ve seen Tom Thum! Because not only does he do rhythms, but he also does voices and sound effects, like live foley for the show. A lot of beatboxers around the world have come to the show just to see Tom Thum perform."

AUSTRALIAN INVASION

The world of circus appears to be very healthy in Australia, something Maidment attributes to the fact that folks down under are very physical and play a lot of sports. "Even the theatre that we make is very athletic!"

Asked about Circa, the Australian company whose show Wunderkammer will open the 2011 edition of Montréal Complètement Cirque, Maidment audibly brightens up. "They’re our friends!" he says. "Also, we have friends in other circuses in Montreal: Cirque Éloize, The 7 Fingers [Les 7 doigts de la main], we know them. So it’s really exciting for us to come and see a lot of other artists we’ve met around the world. The people of Montreal should be really proud of what the festival has provided."

Tom Tom Crew

Montréal Complètement Cirque

at Radio-Canada Chapiteau (1400 René-Lévesque E.)

July 11-23

www.montrealcompletementcirque.com

"We would go see a show, do ours, then we’d go see another show, hang out at the beer tent, check out what The 13th Hour was doing," remembers Caroline Fortin. "It’s so fun to be in the midst of Fringe, to live to the beat of the festival."

Belzébrute ended up winning the 2010 Spirit of the Fringe award, which made the small independent company, which defines itself as a "theatre band," particularly happy because its members had been feeling for a while that they were a perfect fit for the festival. Generally not at ease with the institutions that rule over Montreal’s French theatre community (Carte Prem1ères being a notable exception), they appreciate the looser, more open attitude that makes Fringe unlike any other event.

"There’s usually kind of a divide between francophones and anglophones at Fringe, but we wanted to break through that, we wanted to get to know the English companies," says Jocelyn Sioui, referring to the way they approach Fringe-moi (which Belzébrute will host again this year), but also to the decision to have their new play, Manga!, do away with language barriers. "We were wondering how we could do a show that would be without boundaries. Then came the idea of doing it in pseudo-Japanese…"

SYMPATHY FOR LADY VENGEANCE

Not unlike Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill, which Belzébrute acknowledges as an influence, Manga! is a revenge tale taking place in a colourful, off-the-wall universe informed by Japanese pop culture, from samurai and martial arts films to kabuki theatre, anime and, of course, manga.

"It’s neither a homage nor a spoof of manga. We were inspired by it, but we’re not necessarily big fans of the genre," admits Éric Desjardins. "The idea for Manga! came up during a brainstorming session and we all lit up, we figured it’d make for something really fun visually," says Fortin. "Japan is so beautiful, and there’s something mysterious about it… It was curiosity first and foremost that guided us," adds Amélie Poirier-Aubry.

Telling the story of Ritsuko (Caroline Fortin), a Japanese woman conducting a vendetta against the evil shogun (Jocelyn Sioui) who killed her parents, Manga! is the second part in a "trilogy of vengeance" that started with Shavirez, Gypsy of the Sea and will conclude with a third instalment that will have Belzébrute tackling another iconic genre. "After dealing with pirates and samurais, we’re going to make a western," reveals Sioui. "We love brainstorming and coming up with crazy ideas. Then the challenge is to realize them with the limited means we have!"

TURNING JAPANESE

The concept of having the dialogue spoken in "pseudo-Japanese" proved more challenging than planned. "We though it was really funny at first, then less so, because it wasn’t easy to make it intelligible so that people could still follow what was happening," Sioui recalls, before assuring us that he and his colleagues eventually cracked the code, and that the end result is "like watching a silent film – the action speaks for itself." Desjardins, who plays more than a dozen characters in the play, said, "It’s like acting in a language that’s not your own, you really let yourself go in the emotion. Right away, during the first scene we acted out, we were like, ‘Damn! It works!’"

The company’s most ambitious project to date, Manga! required much DIY ingenuity on everyone’s part. "The costumes were all made with recycled fabric. We asked people to give us old drapes and stuff, and we received some wonderful things. The guy who did the sets [scenographer Mathieu Poirier-Galarneau] also used recycled materials," explains Fortin. Other artists who contributed to the creation of the show include Jacinthe Massey, who did the drawings that are projected on stage, and Clémence Doray, in charge of everything from stage management to lighting design and marketing.

Music plays an integral role in Manga!, with Poirier-Aubry playing various instruments on stage, in full costume and makeup. "I have a bass drum and a floor tom which stand for a Japanese taiko, and I made myself a small Japanese guitar, what they call a shamisen," she says. "I also play harp and flute, I sing and I play sound effects on a keyboard with my feet!"

First performed at Mainline Theatre last January, the show has been revamped for its presentation at Fringe, with Belzébrute specifically focusing on making the second half as "crazy" as the first. Owing as much to film, cartoons and comic books as it does, Manga! is bound to attract an audience that doesn’t usually go to see plays. "A lot of people who never go to the theatre see our shows and love them," Jocelyn points out. "People are thrilled to see a fantastic universe brought to life on stage, often through simple but clever and fun ideas. Like, we gave Ritsuko some puppet legs so she could do high kicks in the air."

"I’m not flexible enough! And I can’t fly!" Fortin explains.

Manga!

Fringe at La Chapelle (3700 St-Dominique)

June 11-12, 15, 17-19

www.montrealfringe.ca