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Culture Stage

Q&A: Robbie Praw, JFL42

If you notice an intense guy roaming around the city this week outside the Royal, the Queen Elizabeth Theatre, the Garrison, Rivoli or Comedy Bar, chances are it’s Robbie Praw. The VP of programming at Montreal’s renowned Just For Laughs and the guy behind the Toronto version, cleverly rebranded as JFL42, is a self-professed comedy nerd, and he wants to know how his festival is doing.

If past years are any indication, it’s doing better than ever. Audience numbers have exploded since JFL42 was unveiled in the fall of 2012 with headliner Louis C.K. Pass-holders have grown from 12,000 to 40,000, and people are finally getting used to the fest’s ingenious credit system, whereby you can see as many acts as possible by using credits and booking shows on your smartphone, checking in when you’re at a show and using those returned credits to book other acts for all 11 days of the festival.

I sat down with Praw earlier this year to discuss what’s new. Note: since we talked, Natasha Leggero dropped out and Nikki Glaser, Liza Treyger and Grace Helbig have been added, upping the female quotient. See schedule and buy passes and tickets at jfl.42.

One big change this year is you’re selling single tickets. Why?

We really want this to be Toronto’s comedy festival, and we’re aware that people who have kids might not be able to get a babysitter for five nights out of the week. We want you to still be able to see Bill Burr or Miranda Sings or John Mulaney or any of those types of acts.

About those passes. It seems like people have finally caught on to how they work.

Three years ago I’d say we got exclusively negative editorial about our passes. But I have tough skin.

I came up in this business going to festivals like Edinburgh and places where everyone saw 15 shows. I also produce the Montreal festival where people see 1 or 2 shows. When we re-engineered this festival, we wanted to come up with a way for people to see as many shows as possible. We thought about wristbands, lanyards… but what happens at every festival that has those things is: you show up and you don’t get in.

I’ve been going to SXSW for years and getting disappointed from buying my extremely expensive pass and not getting into shows.

So we came into a system that at first was very complicated. Now we get negativity about the pass system from only one type of consumer: people who aren’t consumers. When you go through the pass system and actually do it, very rarely does something go wrong. Maybe someone can’t check in somewhere, but then they realize they’ll get their credit back any way because we’re not trying to screw anyone over.  What’s happened is the pass system has allowed us to grow the festival and has succeeded in its initial mission.

People are seeing between 4 and 5 comedy shows on average. We wanted a festival where you can discover new things and you’re constantly surprised. And that only happens when you have the ability to see things for free. Nobody walks into a room for $25-$35 just because someone tells then something’s going to be funny.

There seem to be more podcasts than ever, including Grace Helbig (September 26), T.J. Miller (September 27), Jake and Amir (October 1), Pete Holmes (October 2) and more. [Note: podcasts are conveniently indicated by a headphone icon on the JFL42 site]

That’s intentional. We like to feel we’re building something special here, and podcasts are a way to let people know what’s happening in Toronto. In LA, I’m not hearing, “Oh Montreal was really great this year.” I’m hearing a lot about Toronto. People are saying it’s the best festival, because of the passes. You have acts coming to Toronto that maybe would do a 300 seater, and they come to the festival and 2000 people are seeing them over 3 days.

Okay, the women question. Only one out of the eight headliners is a woman (Miranda Sings). Last year was such a great year for the female headliners…

Not only for headliners. At the Queen Elizabeth Theatre, we had Tig Notaro and Broad City. What I’d like is for people to have memories. To realize that it’s the same person and team that booked last year’s and this year’s festival. We didn’t wake up one day and say, “You know what? We’re not into the ladies!” We book the best we can book. I can’t pretend that we don’t look at who we have and say, “We need to book five more women.” We tried. Sometimes you fail. Women are so hot right now, but they’re also the busiest because of that.

The women that become the most successful are the hardest to get. And speaking of last year: I didn’t make a point of trying to book women. They happened to be the best comedians, and they happened to be available.

How do you choose your headliners?

Choosing the headliners and the rest of the lineup comes from an aggressive, fierce debate by people who care a lot. We have a mixed team people of different backgrounds and ages. We debate, we have people who work in LA and New York. We sit with a long list, argue for the people we think are the most relevant and of the moment. Our final lineup reflects the people who’ve said yes. The great news is that percentage is going up every year. Because people really want to perform here.

It’s about who’s relevant now, but also: Who are you going to enjoy spending an hour with? Take John Mulaney. He has the best hour of stand-up right now. No question. I saw it 4 months ago, called the team and just said, “John Mulaney is a headliner.” It wasn’t based on any other metric. He’s not a TV star. His show was on TV for a minute. The more we book the “hot thing” and they suck, all we hear about is how it sucks. We want to book the thing that’s great.

Say you love The Daily Show and you’re going to see headliner Trevor Noah. But with our pass system you’ll also get to see Arthur Simeon and Dawn Whitwell, or somebody that you’ve never heard of. And suddenly that person’s your favourite comic. When we do that, our job is done.

How did JFL42 come about?

When we were re-engineering the festival, the notion of JFL42 literally came to me as I was getting out of the shower one day. If we wanted to create a vibrant festival, it couldn’t be a festival based on tickets. Then it would just be the Louis C.K. Festival or the Aziz Festival. Let’s say I made it our mission to get Chris Rock to headline JFL42. We would have gotten first day editorial – passes would have been $300 at the entrance level. A Chris Rock ticket is more expensive than our passes. We’re trying to not patronize our fans by giving them shiny objects. We want to give them the best, the most relevant, artists.

And you don’t have, say, a Nasty Show, as you do in Montreal.

That’s one of our top shows in Montreal. At JFL42 we’re more about showcasing artists than concepts. I don’t want the conversation to be about the festival, who the eight people we chose for the lineup were. I want the conversation to be about the artists. They’re the story, they’re the 42.

Who do you want to come to JFL42 you haven’t been able to reach?

We want people who are open minded and smart, people who thrive on discovery. That doesn’t come with an age or a gender. It’s a personality. Don’t get me wrong. I love that people are buying a single ticket to go see Bill Burr. But we want to build a community. My favourite part of the festival is seeing the lines outside the venues. I just walk down the line and immerse myself in it. It’s a cool vibe.

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