Sandy El Bitar is a Lebanese Canadian multidisciplinary artist, community organizer, and drama therapist based in Montreal. Sandy is fascinated by the absurd, people’s imaginations, their inner wisdom, and the healing power of humour. She has an academic background in theatre, recreation and leisure studies, psychology, and drama therapy. In her mental health practice, Sandy avoids BS. She uses tools from expressive arts therapies, play, humour, and breath work using a trauma-informed approach to navigate therapy sessions. In her creative practice, she mixes real-life experiences with her active imagination to explore, process, connect, and interact with the world. Sandy plays with painting, puppets, fashion, and stand up. While she does other things, mostly, she likes to play!

Amer Rez is a comedian based in Montreal. He sources his material from the struggles of everyday living, dating, and his immigrant family. In 2021, the Montreal Gazette chose him as one of the Artists to watch. Amer was a finalist in the MTL Grand competition and was part of the Best of the Fest in the 2020 edition of the MTL Comedy Series. In 2022, he started a new podcast with his good friend Gabriel Omassi called, It Was A Bonne Nuit. His mom says that you will love him!

Andrew Khoury is a Canadian-libano Syrian Montreal-based comedian who has performed in ZooFest & JFL and Fierté Montréal. He uses his flamboyant nature to speak about his experiences as a queer Arab and his shameless pursuit of finding a rich man.

Dana Saleh is a Palestinian-Canadian stand-up comedian based in Montreal. She began her career in improv comedy before moving on to stand-up, and is now a regular at local comedy clubs. Her raw comedic style has made her a veteran of the Ladyfest comedy festival and allowed her to open for some of Canada’s greatest headliners, including John Locke and Dave Merhej. In addition to stand-up comedy, Dana is well known for writing and starring in sketches on stage at Montreal Sketchfest, and making TikTok videos that poke fun at everyday life and feature relatable takes on the Arab diaspora experience.

Elias Sadkni, a Syrian Canadian artist based in Montreal, has a background in development, organisation management, training, and team coaching. Elias is the founder and former executive director of House of Peace, a non-profit development organisation based in Lebanon. Specialised in peacebuilding (very effective), Elias works as a humanitarian worker, specialized in lunch break, zoom meetings, conflict analysis, more zoom meetings by day, and a wanderer by night. Elias does stand-up in Arabic, and has been lately exploring his accent in English.

Stand-up comedian and native-Montrealer, Mariam Khan has been a regular fixture in the stand-up comedy scene for the past five+ years. While she can be seen performing in Montreal almost every night of the week, she has also performed in NYC, Toronto, Ottawa, and San Francisco, and has been selected to perform for ZooFest & JFL.

Sloan Kooshan (he/him) is a Queer and trans-Iranian stand-up comedian based in Montreal with a background in sketch comedy, theater, and improv. Only one year into comedy, Sloan has been featured in various shows: Trans Pride, Bulge, Tales of Gender Affirmation, Queer Comedy All Stars, and Comedy Nest. His comedic style is best described as “Improved storytelling.’’ Sloan is also the producer of his own comedy show called SWANA which features an all-Southwest Asian North African lineup. Sloan’s only mission in life is to make people laugh at his personal struggles told from a multicultural perspective.