The Toronto Sketch Comedy Festival, the city’s longest-running comedy festival celebrates its 21st anniversary with over 70 high-energy showcases of contemporary sketch comedy, drag, storytelling, musical comedy, and clown.
Also known as TOSketchFest, this year’s festival is packed with excellent options for a good laugh and a good time. I’ve put together a list of events for you to add to your calendars.
Hye’s TOSketchFest Picks
BoyFringe & Tik Tok Boom
March 4 at The Theatre Centre
BoyFringe: Three boys who grew up watching the worst parts of the internet have come together to share their thoughts on drugs, sex and a bunch of other things they know absolutely nothing about.
Tik Tok Boom: This is a high-octane, one-act sketch comedy revue where time is on no one’s side. Every sketch clocks in at two minutes or less, delivering bite-sized blasts of absurdity, and satire.
Amish Famous
March 5 & 14 at Comedy Bar Bloor – Cabaret
Amish Famous is a solo sketch musical, starring Spencer Glassman, about an Amish girl who defies her Bishop father by leaving home to audition for ‘American Idol’; told from the perspective of the detective investigating her subsequent disappearance.
Moments in Flight
March 6 & 7 at Comedy Bar Bloor – Main
Moments in Flight is a 30 minute love letter to my father, exploring joy, grief, and memory through our shared language of comedy. The show is centered around a United Airlines flight where each outrageous passenger is inspired by a moment with my dad.
International Women’s Day programming
March 8 at The Theatre Centre
Featuring a full day of programming from female and non-binary sketch comedians: No Vowels, Legally Brown, Sketchy Broads, Janelle McGuinness, Alien Pizza, Big Chick Energy, Amanda Xeller, and AmeriCanadian.
Sex T-Rex Presents Crime After Crime (After Crime)
March 6 & 7 at The Theatre Centre
In this multi-award-winning hit, Toronto’s beloved physical comedy company presents a multi-generational epic spanning three “Crime Periods”; film noir set in the 50s, a heist in the 70s, and a buddy cop in the 90s.
Joy Provision & Legally Brown
March 11 at The Theatre Centre
Joy Provision Presents Binnoch and Clack Get Reel, in their latest work, Joy Provision’s Rena and Ethan resurrect their childhood alter egos that permitted them to be too much and learn from failure. In this new iteration of their duo, they are leaping face-first (and camera-ready) to foray into filmed content, something they also find challenging.
Legally Brown presents: Corporate CULTure! is a 30-minute sketch show that follows four unforgettable employees of Brown & Co. It’s The Office, meets women of colour… Legally Brown use humour to voice their lived experiences, grief, and daily struggles.
Tita Collective presents Tita Jokes
March 12 at The Theatre Centre
Tita Collective is an all-Filipina collective composed of award-winning playwrights, comedians, musicians, dancers, theatre makers and actors, based in Toronto, Canada. They explore different mediums to tell the stories about the Filipin* diaspora.
BDB Mandarin Sketch
March 14 at The Theatre Centre
Performing in Mandarin with English captions, BDB stands as Canada’s only Mandarin-language sketch and improv comedy troupe. Born out of BDB Comedy Club (founded March 2022), the group bridges Mandarin and English humor to showcase the voices of bilingual comedians.
Please note this performance welcomes bilingual audiences, and all sketches feature live English surtitles.
TOSketchFest26 runs from March 4 to March 15 at The Theatre Centre & Comedy Bar Bloor. You can attend individual performances with single tickets or choose festival passes. For full festival schedule and to purchase passes and tickets, visit torontosketchfest.com.
