Just For Laughs Comedy Fest Unveils Winners Of Annual ‘Stand Up & Pitch’ Competition

Stand Up & Pitch, the 10th annual comedy competition held during the famed Just For Laughs festival in Montreal that aims to discover new comedic talent, has announced this year’s victors.

Stand Up & Pitch consists of three categories: ‘Beyond The Box‘ (for short-form works, presented by Tubefilter); a CBC Comedy-sponsored category honoring Canadian talent; and ‘From Set To Screen’, which assesses works intended for distributions on TV, OTT, and SVOD services. Winners — who will receive an all-expense-paid trip to next year’s festival, including travel and lodging — were chosen by comedy exec judges from Adult Swim, Amazon Studios, Comedy Central, HBO, Hulu, Netflix, Snap, and more.

In Beyond The Box, James Madge and Jana Peck (pictured above) were victorious for their Madge & Peck series about grown-up life. In the CBC Comedy Pitch Program category, Nthenya Ndunda

and Siobhan Baird won for Domesticate Me, a TV comedy series about unemployment. And finally, in ‘From Set To Screen’, Darrell Dennis and Katya Gardner received top honors for Big Game, about a hustler who returns to his indigenous reservation and becomes an unlikely messiah.

Just for Laughs was founded in 1983, and celebrated its 37 edition this year. The Stand Up &Pitch competition is part of Just For Laughs ComedyPRO — a four-day session targeting industry-minded attendees, including keynotes, panels, luncheons, and networking events. Submissions for Stand Up & Pitch were open through May, and then five finalists in each category were announced in July.

You can read more about this year’s winners right here, and you can check out a teaser for Madge & Peck below: