PRESS

Sugar Sammy's Paris experiment seems to be working out: 20 shows booked

2016-11-29

After honing material in 1,400 shows in 28 countries in English, French, Hindi and Punjabi, Montreal comedy star Sugar Sammy has just announced a run of 20 French shows at Paris's L'EuropĂ©en theatre, starting March 1. 

After multiple sold-out runs of his shows here and on tour, culminating in an outdoor performance of You're Gonna Rire at Quartier des spectacles as part of Just for Laughs, the comedian left Canada earlier this year to begin a two-year residency in France to see if his approach would work in France. 

He told Bill Brownstein this summer that he had already tested the waters there for two one-month stints.

“They liked the fact that an outsider could come and give a severe yet honest and funny critique of their social landscape. The good thing is that I can push further than the French comedians there, because I'm not from there.”

A post on his Facebook page on Tuesday said the new show is an “honest and severe critique of France and I don't care about the consequences because I live in Montreal.”

If you were among the estimated 115,000 who attended the outdoor bilingual show in July, you got a taste of some of the new material, written specifically for a French audience and polished in 42 sold-out shows in Paris's Point Virgule. The French producer is Thierry Suc, president of TS3. If you didn't, here's a sample.

Between now and then, he is as booked as ever, performing private shows in Montreal and Val d'Or in December, back in France and Belgium in January, and in Aix-en-Provence, Lille, Brussels, Nantes, Boulogne and Lyon in February.