montreal fringe festival 2025

"Horse Girls" and "The Heterosexuals"

Theatre

Your guide to the 2025 Montreal Fringe Festival

by Savannah Stewart

10 highlights of this year’s Fringe, running through June 15.

June in Montreal means the return of the Fringe Festival, bringing a fresh bunch of shows for all ages and tastes for 2025! Here are some highlights of this year’s edition, running through June 15.

ANARTISTE: Ode à la liberté d’expression 

This French-language site-specific performance by THÉÂTRE MORTS-VIVANTS confronts the boundaries of art, activism and belonging. Set inside an artist residence now under threat of eviction, the piece follows the transformation of an artist who, through her situation, becomes an anarchist — a symbol of resistance in a world that punishes difference. Created and directed by Dona-Bella Kassab, with design by Romy Claire, ANARTISTE navigates the tender fault lines of identity, censorship, and creative survival. More than a play, it’s a living protest, a tribute to voices that refuse to be erased. 3655 St-Laurent #208, June 3–15, $19, 12+

Your guide to the 2025 Montreal Fringe Festival

The Routine

The Routine is what you get when you put Mr. Bean in Death of a Salesman. This surreal physical miming comedy follows a lonely office worker who stumbles through a portal and into a whimsical quest for the meaning of life. With dreamlike vignettes, absurd dances and a touch of existential wonder, The Routine turns the everyday into the extraordinary. Mission Santa Cruz (60 Rachel W.), June 4–15, $19, 12+

The Waste Land — A Ritual in Five Acts 

T.S. Eliot fans will rejoice in this immersive solo performance and visual art installation that breathes new, urgent life into his iconic poem, The Waste Land. Blurring the lines between theatre, gallery, funeral and séance, the piece transforms Eliot’s fractured modernist landscape into a visceral rite of passage confronting empires, ecological collapse and personal reckoning. For creator Gavin Sewell, who has navigated visual impairment since childhood, The Waste Land has long been more than literature — it’s been a survival manual for making sense of a disjointed world. Staged in English with French overtitles, the work unfolds across five acts, passing through loss, collapse and the possibility of rebirth. Following its premiere at the 2025 Montreal Fringe Festival, the project will expand into an exhibition and a radio-play adaptation, continuing its meditation on what it means to see clearly in a world coming undone. Cité-des-Hospitalières, La Grande Chapelle (209 des Pins W.), June 5–14, $19, 12+

Harlem of the North 

Harlem of the North is a stirring new musical by Frangelica Cajuste that traces the journey of Ella, a young woman uprooted to 1920s Montreal with dreams of starting over. As the city’s vibrant jazz scene pulses around her, Ella finds herself caught between the weight of loss, the thrill of love and the fire of her own ambition. Set against a backdrop of smoky clubs and shifting identities, Harlem of the North is a story about how far one woman will go to live freely on her own terms. With original music and bold storytelling, this is a soulful ode to resilience in a tough world. La Chapelle (3700 St-Dominique), June 5–14, $15

The Heterosexuals

A Fringe circuit favourite, this hilariously subversive solo show dives headfirst into the bizarre rituals, questionable fashion choices and bewildering behaviours of that most mysterious species: straight people. Armed with biting wit and “undercover” field research (gathered while posing as one of them), performer Johnnie McNamara Walker peels back the layers of hetero-normativity with a mix of storytelling, satire and awkward personal confessions. Equal parts roast and revelation, The Heterosexuals flips the script on who’s “normal” and who’s just pretending. Come for the laughs, stay for the tea and shade. O PATRO VÝŠ (356 Mont-Royal E.), June 5–15, $19, 16+

Horse Girls

If you were a horse girl, this play is for you! Horse Girls is a darkly funny descent into the obsessive world of the Lady Jean Ladies, a tween equestrian club where friendship is sacred, but betrayal is just around the corner. As alliances fray and innocence buckles under the weight of adolescence, this biting comedy by Jenny Rachel Weiner gallops through the wild emotional terrain of girlhood with wit, edge and just a touch of chaos. MainLine Theatre (3997 St-Laurent) June 5–15, $14, 16+

POZ 

A raw and unflinchingly honest solo show by Mark Keller, POZ traces a decade of living with HIV through the real-life story of a six-day bike ride from Toronto to Montreal. Winner of the Toronto Fringe Best New Play, it explores stigma, resilience and what it means to be HIV-positive today, told with heart and humour. With POZ, Keller asks what it takes to move forward when the road ahead feels uphill. Mission Santa Cruz (60 Rachel W.) June 9–14, $19, 16+

LITTLE STAR: BORN OF DESIRE

Told entirely through lipsync and movement, LITTLE STAR: BORN OF DESIRE is a four-act performance providing an abstract origin story of club kid drag persona Little Star, exploring the deep need to reinvent, transcend and give life to one’s truest self. Mythic, magnetic and unapologetically queer, BORN OF DESIRE is a creation story like no other. MainLine Theatre (3997 St-Laurent), June 5–15, $14, 18+

Shuttlecock

Get ready to embark on a bold, hilarious, and refreshingly absurd journey through the messy middle of life. Teetering on the edge of “the change,” creator Melissa G. dives into reproductive health, sexuality, aging and late-in-life coming out, all with a clown’s heart and a wink. This interactive solo show blends storytelling and play to tackle taboo topics with humour and honesty. Because Shuttlecock invites audience participation, performances can shift from night to night. Cité-des-Hospitalières – La Grande Chapelle (209 des Pins W.), June 5–15, $15, 18+

Star Wars d’icitte : La guerre des cônes

Star Wars d’icitte : La guerre des cônes is a musical, satirical and wildly Québécois twist on George Lucas’s prequel trilogy. Follow young Anakin Skywalker from a podrace on the Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve (of Tatooine) to his fateful Jedi training, as this zany adaptation uncovers the true origin of the guerre des cônes, the dark side of the Force, and, of course, Darth Vader. Written by Catherine Bastien and Raphaëlle Proulx-Tremblay, this parody packs lightsabers, laughs, local flair and sand. Comedy Theatre of Montreal (1113 de Maisonneuve E.), June 5–15, $19

Your guide to the 2025 Montreal Fringe Festival

For the complete festival program, please visit the Montreal Fringe website.

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Posted in Theatre

by Savannah Stewart

Contributing editor for Arts
Savannah Stewart is a freelance journalist and Managing Editor at The Rover. She is passionate about community reporting and is happiest writing about art, language and culture in Montreal.