NXNE COMEDY
presents
REGGIE WATTS
MARC MARON SIMON AMSTELL THE PIZZA UNDERGROUND
ANDY MILONAKIS SCOTT THOMPSON KURT BRAUNOHLER ROBERT KELLY
One-man musical mastermind and comedian Reggie Watts, British stand-up star Simon Amstell, Kroll Show’s Andy Milonakis, and Macaulay Culkin’s The Pizza Underground will headline NORTH BY NORTHEAST (NXNE) Comedy this June 18-22, 2014, sponsored by Fleshlight.
NXNE Comedy will host The Pizza Underground Brunch, an all-ages show at the Edward Day Gallery on Friday, June 20, where NXNE wristband and pass holders will be treated to free pizza and a lunch-time performance by Macaulay Culkin’s The Pizza Underground, who re-work Velvet Underground songs into odes about pizza. The Pizza Underground will have an additional NXNE Comedy performance that same evening at The Great Hall.
NXNE Comedy has confirmed over 100 comics from across North America, performing stand-up, improv, and sketch comedy throughout the festival dates. The lineup includes Scott Thompson, who recently revived his Kids in the Hall character Buddy Cole to report on the Sochi Olympics for The Colbert Report; and Darrin Rose, the host of Match Game, a recent guest on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson.
In partnership with Empire Comedy Live, NXNE Comedy will also present Kurt Braunohler, a regular on @midnight and Chelsea Lately; Robert Kelly, as seen on HBO and Comedy Central; and DeAnne Smith, a festival favourite at Just for Laughs.
NXNE Comedy will spotlight Toronto’s top comics, such as Mark Little, one of Variety’s Top 10 Comics to Watch in 2013; Dylan Gott, the host of The Sport Brahs on Sirius/XM Radio; Nigel Grinstead, winner of the 2013 Cream of Comedy Award; Canadian Comedy Award winner Steve Patrick Adams; Great Canadian Laugh Off winner Mark DeBonis; Matt O’Brien, Winner of Best Standup at LA Comedy Festival; and Eddie Della Siepe, a regular on Much’s Video on Trial.
Returning to NXNE Comedy for special festival presentations are the Canadian Comedy Awards Alumni Show, featuring past award-winning comics; Comedy Records, who will showcase their roster with multiple shows at Free Times Cafe; Toronto’s popular verbal smackdown show Rapp Battlez; original fan-generated material based on legendary manga series Sailor Moon, brought to life by Toronto comedians at The Fan Fiction Show; The Epic Nerd Show presents 3 shows with the geekiest of nerd comedy; Raw & Hard, a comedy show on the filthy side; a special edition of Sunday Night Live with The Sketchersons; five nights of cannabis friendly comedy at Vapor Central; and Strip Comedy, where comics take an item of clothing off for every joke that bombs. For the full NXNE Comedy line-up, visit www.nxne.com/comedy.
NXNE Comedy wristband holders will be granted entry to the Marc Maron keynote speech at NXNE Interactive at the Hyatt Regency on Wednesday June 18, and NXNE Film will screen comedy films at Bloor Cinema for the Laugh Sabbath Film Fest, a collection of comedy shorts selected by Toronto’s comedy group Laugh Sabbath.
NXNE ART
Exploring Art and Urbanism
Toronto: A City Transforming
Set against the backdrop of Toronto’s unprecedented construction and growth, NORTH BY NORTHEAST (NXNE) Art unveils a brave new world of concepts and designs for urban life after the dust settles. NXNE Art will showcase these groundbreaking ideas by combining art, technology and civil action throughout Toronto June 16-22, 2014.
NXNE Art gives people the power to participate – not simply spectate – in the new NXNE Art Lounge on King Street West. Alex Josephson of Partisans Projects and Norm Li Architectural Graphics + Illustrations – both leaders in the innovative use of public space – will create an imagined streetscape for Toronto’s future in a stunning 3D visual installation, where visitors will be able to glimpse and help envision the city’s evolution.
The NXNE Art Lounge will also include an infinity-mirrored art work by Jamie Webster of Common Good in partnership with Future Talk; David Spriggs’ 15-foot circular examination of space; and a custom 10-foot vinyl illustration of a future Toronto by homegrown artist Juliana Neufeld.
NXNE Art will infiltrate the streets of Toronto with “Urban Takeovers” by artists including En Masse, a Montreal art collective, transforming a Toronto alley into a large-scale art piece featuring their well-known collaborative black and white drawings; Alex Senna, a special guest artist from Brazil, who will paint three walls along Queen Street West with his touching street art; and Dawn of Man, who will bring their roaming projection Space Monkey to Toronto to create guerilla projections – or, as the New York Times wrote, “works that are shown in public without any of the necessary approvals.”
NXNE Art will team up with other NXNE Festival streams: NXNE Interactive hosts a talk by Sakchin Bessette, Co-Founder and Creative Director of Moment Factory; and NXNE Music will include unique art experiences within selected band showcases.
“Artists from the northeast part of the continent are shaping a radically different public experience,” stated Jacquelyn West, Art Festival Director of NXNE. “In this watershed year for this newest stream of the festival, we wanted to use the potential of art to imagine the future of everyday city life in Toronto. For one week we will escape the bureaucracy and institutions and connect to one another in experience rooted in inspiration.”
Hermann & Audrey, partners in NXNE Art, is a Creative House enabling a generation of creatives to work in tandem toward commercial, artistic and philanthropic goals. Hermann & Audrey has production and gallery spaces in Toronto and Chicago. To learn more visit hermannaudrey.com.
Also:
NXNE Interactive
presents
MICK EBELING of Not Impossible
SCOTT LAMB of Buzzfeed • BRIAN KNAPPENBERGER, Filmmaker
VANESSA THOMAS of Songza • GOLRIZ LUCINA of Soul Pancake
Founder and CEO of Not Impossible, MICK EBELING, and SCOTT LAMB, the Vice President of International at BuzzFeed, will be joining the already champion list of speakers for NORTH BY NORTHEAST Interactive (NXNEi) at the Hyatt Regency June 17-21. Presented by Say Media, MICK EBELING will be returning to NXNEi after last year’s keynote success to present Project Daniel and how Not Impossible is working with the make community to rewrite the story of access. SCOTT LAMB of BuzzFeed, a social news and entertainment company that GQ called “one of the hottest media companies on the planet,” will answer the million-dollar question “Where the fuck do ideas come from?”
Also challenging and engaging NXNEi audiences will be BRIAN KNAPPENBERGER, creator of multiple award-winning documentaries including We Are Legion: The Story of the Hacktivists and his newest film The Internet’s Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz – which the Hollywood Reporter described as “an inspiring account of the life of, and an infuriating chronology of the persecution of, one of the Internet’s most impressive prodigies.” Managing Director VANESSA THOMAS of Songza, whose company was named by Forbes as one of top five companies to transform advertising, will also share her stories and successes.
Other NXNEi speakers changing the way we look at the world through digital disruption will be Creative Director GOLRIZ LUCINA, who will delve into why SoulPancake has grown from a website to a best-selling book and beyond the initial goal of “making stuff that matters,” and SAKCHIN BESSETTE, Co-Founder and Creative Director of Moment Factory, a studio that creates multimedia environments while representing the mantra, “WE DO IT IN PUBLIC.”
Product and Community Director of Emotiv SILONA BONEWALD will be helping the audience “be a Jedi!” by giving live demos of brain-controlled objects; CEO and President of Interlude YONI BLOCH will discuss how his company recently launched a self-service platform that gives anyone the tools to design and publish their own interactive videos; FACTOR’s Vice President of Operations, ALLISON OUTHIT, will discuss what artists and companies must know about qualifying and applying for funding; and Founder and Executive Director of OpenMedia, STEVE ANDERSON, will explain the challenges inherent in working toward informed and participatory digital policy and the protection of online rights.
Previously announced NXNEi speakers include intellectually charged Actor, Comedian, Writer and Podcaster MARC MARON; OVO founder and Drake’s co-manager OLIVER EL-KHATIB; founding President and Executive Director of Avaaz RICKEN PATEL; and CINDY GALLOP, founder of MakeLoveNotPorn.
For the full list of NXNEi programming and additional information, visit nxne.com/interactive. All NXNE badges and wristbands are now available online at nxne.com/tickets.