Arts & Entertainment – Winnipeg Free Press

High on passion, low on fuel

Conrad Sweatman 7 minute read Yesterday at 9:00 AM CDT

It’s a story as old as rock and roll: some kids hop in a van, fill up on cigarettes and gas, and let ‘er rip on the Trans-Canada Highway in pursuit of fun, fame and fortune.

Or, failing fortune, a wad of 20s and loose change to cover gas on the way home two weeks later.

If they turn on the radio before reaching the Perimeter, hopefully the bad news and bad vibes they hear won’t persuade them into pulling a U-turn.

In June, it was reported that Manitoba’s annual inflation rate had jumped to 4.6 per cent in May, topping all provinces alongside Nova Scotia. Statistics Canada said drivers were paying the highest for gas since June 2022, when Russia’s invasion of Ukraine threw global supply chains into chaos.

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The Arts

Indigenous theatre founder gets nod for prestigious prize

Ben Waldman 3 minute read Preview

Indigenous theatre founder gets nod for prestigious prize

Ben Waldman 3 minute read Yesterday at 2:02 AM CDT

For her work as the founding artistic director of Oshkagoojin Indigenous Theatre for Youth, Winnipeg’s Nova Courchene has been named the recipient of one of Manitoba theatre’s highest honours for emerging arts leaders.

Since 2023, the Cherry Karpyshin Arts Management Prize has been given out by Prairie Theatre Exchange to early-career or aspiring arts managers. Named for PTE’s longtime general manager, for whom the company’s mainstage is also named, the Cherry Prize is accompanied by professional supports and a $2,500 cash award.

Meaning “new moon” in Anishinaabemowin, Oshkagoojin runs a variety of initiatives in Winnipeg, including the teen-focused Rising Voices, the middle years Growing Voices, and the early years Young Voices programs. Through storytelling, movement, narrative games and guided play, the Young Voices program introduces Indigenous children aged five through nine to the fundamentals of collaborative and co-operative theatre with a curriculum devised through a cultural lens.

“As I continue to grow Oshkagoojin Indigenous Theatre for Youth, I look forward to strengthening the organization’s capacity, sustainability, and national reach so that more Indigenous young people can access theatre, cultural learning, and artistic leadership opportunities in their own communities,” says Courchene in a release. “I believe that when Indigenous youth are empowered to tell their stories, entire communities benefit, and I am excited to continue building these pathways for future generations.

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Yesterday at 2:02 AM CDT

Books

Fraught father-son relationship addressed

Reviewed by Susan Huebert 4 minute read Preview

Fraught father-son relationship addressed

Reviewed by Susan Huebert 4 minute read Yesterday at 2:00 AM CDT

The end of a relationship can bring clarity to the elements that caused its disintegration, even when the estrangement is within families. In Notes from a Wayward Son, writer and professor Adrian De Leon looks back on his troubled relationship with his father while vividly portraying his life as the son of immigrants to Canada.

De Leon was born in Manila, Philippines, and raised in Ontario. He is the author and editor of five books, including a volume of poetry as well as two academic books on Filipino life and history. He has collaborated with filmmakers to create and co-host A People’s History of Asian America and Historian’s Take, and is currently a professor of American and Philippine history at New York University.

Notes from a Wayward Son is written as a kind of letter from the author to his father, with De Leon often addressing Tatay (Filipino for father) directly.

Despite their troubled and often abusive relationship, De Leon acknowledges the good lessons he learned from his father. He also notes that his father’s smile “could lighten the roughest of folks.”

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Yesterday at 2:00 AM CDT

Books

Luke Marsden photo
Now based in Australia, Todd Babiak is a former arts columnist with the Edmonton Journal and the author of eight novels.

Gen Z protagonist’s insecurities tackled with unexpected levity

Reviewed by Morley Walker 4 minute read Preview

Gen Z protagonist’s insecurities tackled with unexpected levity

Reviewed by Morley Walker 4 minute read Yesterday at 2:00 AM CDT

This timely and witty Canadian novel wades into the North American culture wars, while dipping its toes into the waters of philosophy and urban development.

In What Gentleman Do, veteran Alberta-born author Todd Babiak imagines a gen-Z protagonist whose personal insecurities have pushed him into the clutches of a white supremacist podcaster.

The protagonist, Waylon Gans, narrates in the close first-person. At 20 and essentially an incel (involuntary celibate), he thinks of himself as “some loser from a town nobody has ever heard of.”

Walleye, “current population 97,461 and falling,” occupies an unspecified part of the North American prairie.

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Yesterday at 2:00 AM CDT

Books

New slate of Kanata Classics titles incoming

Ben Sigurdson 4 minute read Preview

New slate of Kanata Classics titles incoming

Ben Sigurdson 4 minute read Yesterday at 2:00 AM CDT

The Kanata Classics series of book titles is slated to double in size when the six newest volumes land at better booksellers on Tuesday.

The series features previously published titles repackaged and with new introductions, and aims to “bring a balance of Indigenous and non-Indigenous voices into provocative and nuanced dialogue with one another.” The first half-dozen titles launched in July 15, 2025, and included work by Jordan Abel, Kim Thúy, Marian Engel and others.

The forthcoming titles in the second run include Billy-Ray Belcourt’s This Wound is a World, Gabrielle Roy’s The Tin Flute, Richard Wagamese’s Starlight (featuring an introduction by Winnipeg’s Shelagh Rogers), André Alexis’ Childhood, Maria Campbell’s Little Badger and the Fire Spirit and Omar El Akkad’s American War.

For more on the series, see wfp.to/kanataclassics.

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Yesterday at 2:00 AM CDT

Books

Frank Augstein / Associated Press files
Norwegian Magnus Carlsen (left) and Italian-American Fabiano Caruana wait for the start of the final day of the World Chess Championship in London in 2018.

Gruelling world of competitive chess and its top players profiled in riveting new account

Reviewed by Matt Henderson 5 minute read Preview

Gruelling world of competitive chess and its top players profiled in riveting new account

Reviewed by Matt Henderson 5 minute read Yesterday at 2:00 AM CDT

For many avid Free Press readers, a favourite morsel is the biweekly chess segment authored by Cecil Rosner. While many, including this reviewer, might not be terribly skilled at chess and more inclined to fiddle with the puzzles on the same page, there’s something about the explanation of the history, depth of thinking and grace under pressure that envelopes the mystery of this ancient game.

For Toronto Star journalist and editor Jordan Himelfarb, the mystery and beauty of chess not only stems from the evolution of the game itself — from India to Persia and to Spain — but also in its prime characters that have shaped the modern game over the last 150 years and who vie for global chess supremacy.

In Interregnum: Inside the Gruelling and Glamorous Battle to Become the Next King of Chess, Himelfarb tells the tale of the lead-up to the 2024 world championships, chronicling famed chess royalty, such as Magnus Carlsen, as well as his challengers — an assortment of millennial and gen-Z geniuses who possess what Himelfarb sees as the keys to chess mastery: “a powerful memory, keen analytics, a gift for abstraction, a tireless work ethic, competitive drive, physical endurance.”

Moreso, the elite chess players of the world have something deep inside them that compels them to leave school, family and what we might deem a normal life. It’s certainly not for great riches or fame — although perhaps the top 10 players might achieve some success in this area. Rather, as Himelfarb, a former professional Scrabble player, details, these chess grandmasters “are transfixed by its beauty, lured by its depth, compelled by the contest. Family, friends, hobbies — all life beyond the board begins to recede.”

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Yesterday at 2:00 AM CDT

Books

Spirit of live theatre captured in haunted festival venue

Reviewed by Craig Terlson 5 minute read Preview

Spirit of live theatre captured in haunted festival venue

Reviewed by Craig Terlson 5 minute read Yesterday at 2:00 AM CDT

When is a book like a play, or a play like a book — or both? This is the underlying question posed by David Jón Fuller in his debut novel, Venue 13. Considering Fuller’s background as an editor and reviewer for this newspaper, and a longtime part of our city’s theatre community, who better to write a novel that takes place during the Summer Theatre Festival, known locally as Skeeter Fest? (This may sound familiar to any readers who have attended a Winnipeg festival known as the fringe.)

Venue 13 takes the reader behind the scenes of the festival — and not just the actors, directors and sound techs, but the venue owners who mount numerous shows with the hope of attracting large crowds to their BYOV (bring your own venue) location (to use the fringe parlance).

Robert Laliberte has bought an old building that he hopes to resurrect into an arts hub, complete with a fancy fusion restaurant run by his friend, the exotically named Ihor. Winnipeg, and the Exchange District in particular, are well-drawn in the novel, and you can have fun trying to guess which buildings Fuller is referencing.

The novel is a rogue’s gallery of theatre types: the controlling directors, the perfectionist producers, the sensitive actors and even the guy called in to fix the rotting foundation of the theatre.

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Yesterday at 2:00 AM CDT

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Books

Mark Davis photo
Dave Eggers has written in a range of genres since his 2000 breakout memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius.

Dave Eggers’ stunning new novel ruminates on friendship, art and the tension between conception and creation

Reviewed by Scott Montgomery 6 minute read Preview

Dave Eggers’ stunning new novel ruminates on friendship, art and the tension between conception and creation

Reviewed by Scott Montgomery 6 minute read Yesterday at 2:00 AM CDT

It’s a funny thing to review a book. There’s an obligation to tell readers what it’s about, to summarize the plot without giving too much away and to evaluate whether it deserves their time. Yet sometimes a book is so wonderful you just want to scream at everyone, “Read this thing now,” and consider it a service rendered. Such is the case with Dave Eggers’ latest novel Contrapposto.

This might sound like an overreaction, but if your goal is to be moved beyond measure and to spend a few hundred wonderfully written pages wrestling with sharply observed questions about art, talent, friendship, ambition, happiness and the meaning of success, then you’ve found your next read.

Eggers is the prolific San Francisco-based author behind numerous works including A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, You Shall Know Our Velocity and A Hologram for the King. He’s also published short fiction collections, children’s books, co-founded the literary journal/ publishing house/website McSweeney’s and established himself as a respected visual artist. Contrapposto represents the meeting point of his literary and artistic passions.

The title of the novel offers the perfect entry point. Contrapposto is the relaxed pose common in classical sculpture in which the body’s weight shifts onto one leg, creating a natural asymmetry. (Think Venus de Milo or Michelangelo’s David.) That balance through imbalance becomes the defining shape of the novel’s central, lifetime-spanning relationship between Robert “Cricket” Dibb and Olympia Argyros.

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Yesterday at 2:00 AM CDT

Books

Jenna Marie Wakani photo
In addition to her writing on baseball, Stacey May Fowles has published two novels, a children’s book and contributed to several literary anthologies.

Wryly funny essays chronicle rocky road to motherhood, postpartum anxiety

Reviewed by Kathryne Cardwell 4 minute read Preview

Wryly funny essays chronicle rocky road to motherhood, postpartum anxiety

Reviewed by Kathryne Cardwell 4 minute read Yesterday at 2:00 AM CDT

‘Motherhood is often oppressively touted as one of the most important things a woman can do, and yet that same oppressive force demands she never speak on the inherent realities of mothering.”

So begins Toronto sportswriter Stacey May Fowles in her touching memoir on becoming a mother after four years of infertility.

Fowles is best-known for her baseball reporting, including 2017’s Baseball Life Advice, a collection of essays celebrating baseball while challenging sexist attitudes towards female sports reporters.

She’s also published two novels, a children’s book and contributed to several literary anthologies, demonstrating gifts for reporting, research and prose.

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Yesterday at 2:00 AM CDT

Books

Smith’s sisters haunted by ghosts, childhood memories

Reviewed by Riel Lynch 3 minute read Preview

Smith’s sisters haunted by ghosts, childhood memories

Reviewed by Riel Lynch 3 minute read Yesterday at 2:00 AM CDT

The 15th novel by Scottish author Ali Smith details the remembered traumas or ghost stories of sisters Petra and Patch, who heard of ghost horses and people that were “pancaked” by an army tank (presumably while under military occupation during the First World War).

One also recalls feigning phone conversations with the neighbourhood kids’ dead dogs, while the other just remembers hearing of these stories in the form of fragmented memories. Some of these experiences — either directly witnessed or merely remembered by the two in piecemeal will haunt them deep into their adult years.

Despite having not seen each other in years, through the sisters’ telephone conversations they piece together memories and discuss present-day political goings-on without explicit reference to a particular country. There is an irony to the elder sister Petra’s occupation, as she is (now) an assistant audiologist — Petra also acts as an aid to what is remembered in the past or what was heard by Patch some years ago in childhood.

A homophone to Gliff, Smith’s 2024 novel, Glyph can be read without the former — the two are considered distant relatives or companion pieces. There are no characters or plotlines which tie the two together, and Glyph differs in its temporality in that it situates the sisters in between past and present day, as opposed to Gliff’s focus on the future.

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Yesterday at 2:00 AM CDT

Books

Mysterious payment made to missing mom leads to tense father-daughter reunion

Reviewed by Andrew Geary 4 minute read Preview

Mysterious payment made to missing mom leads to tense father-daughter reunion

Reviewed by Andrew Geary 4 minute read Yesterday at 2:00 AM CDT

The twisted and troubled relationship between the charming but irresponsible father John Dixon (Dix) and his adult daughter Lila lies at the heart of Justin Halpern’s comedic novel.

Halpern, author of the New York Times bestselling memoir Sh*t My Dad Says, is executive producer and co-showrunner of the Emmy award-winning TV series Abbott Elementary. His literary flair for snappy dialogue and sharp humour is evident in his debut novel, Get Lost.

Dix is one of those men who, despite having a messy personal life, including a jail stint, manages to remain charismatic and overwhelmingly positive. Once a promising semi-professional baseball player, Dix’s bad decisions have left him destitute and stuck back in his dusty hometown of Los Armarios, Calif. He’s been estranged from Lila for years, but the two reunite when Lila returns to town to look for her missing mother, Mattie.

After reaching Los Armarios, Lila’s first stop is the town’s jail, where her father is being held on suspicion of killing Mattie. Lila finds the suspect at the centre of a group of laughing police officers as Dix regales them with jokes and stories.

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Yesterday at 2:00 AM CDT

Movies

Sony Pictures Classics
In Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass, (from left) John Slattery, Ben Wang, Miles Gutierrez-Riley, Zoey Deutch and Ken Marino are loosely inspired by characters in The Wizard of Oz.

Goofy ensemble comedy riffs on The Wizard of Oz

Alison Gillmor 5 minute read Preview

Goofy ensemble comedy riffs on The Wizard of Oz

Alison Gillmor 5 minute read Friday, Jul. 10, 2026

Unabashedly all over the place, this amiable ensemble comedy from director and co-writer David Wain (known for the sketch show The State and the Wet Hot American Summer movies) delivers a nonstop, hit-and-miss stream of dirty puns, slapstick gags and absurdist non sequiturs.

The plucky, self-deprecating cast manages to pull off some good comic moments. And as with the old Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker movies, when a bit doesn’t land, you can just wait 45 seconds or so for the next one.

Still, the film is riffing on The Wizard of Oz (with added sex jokes!). While’s there’s no need to go to David Lynch levels of obsession with this touchstone of Americana, it might help if all the funny stuff added up to something more.

The titular Gail Daughtry (Zoey Deutch) is a peppy, optimistic gal from rural Kansas, best known for penning an essay for her community newspaper titled Why I’m Never Leaving This Town.

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Friday, Jul. 10, 2026

Music

Creative freedom

Rob Williams 7 minute read Preview

Creative freedom

Rob Williams 7 minute read Thursday, Jul. 9, 2026

Kathleen Edwards is experiencing total freedom.

Years removed from taking a break from the music industry, the songwriter, who turns 48 on Saturday, has come to a certain peace about who she is as a person and a musician.

On her latest full-length, Billionaire, released last year, she wrote almost enough music for a double album, but time constraints limited her to a tight 10 tracks. Local music fans will get to hear some of those songs when Edwards returns to the Winnipeg Folk Festival Sunday.

“I think it’s an age thing. I think I’ve gotten less caught in, ‘What if this isn’t good, or is it?’ And now I’m like, ‘Oh, nothing is a waste of time on the creative front. Everything has a purpose.’

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Thursday, Jul. 9, 2026

Music

MIKE DEAL / FREE PRESS
Jacob Brodovsky’s new album is his attempt at wrestling with the future of humankind.

Songwriter reckons with past, present on new album

Ben Waldman 8 minute read Preview

Songwriter reckons with past, present on new album

Ben Waldman 8 minute read Wednesday, Jul. 8, 2026

Grab a kitchen scale and you’ll quickly see that Jacob Brodovsky’s newest LP is exactly the same weight as his last one, but Tell the Kids We Tried is still the heaviest music released by the singer-songwriter.

Even on its more upbeat, playful tracks — reminiscent of jangly, optimistic indie rock from Canadian indie heroes such as Dan Mangan, Joel Plaskett and the Weakerthans — the newest release from the Winnipeg-raised artist tackles concurrent global fiascos such as climate catastrophe, political apathy, genocide and an abdication of human rights.

“Folk music is an intrinsically political genre,” the 35-year-old says. “The people who started (the Winnipeg) folk fest were intrinsically political people, and the best folk music that’s being made today is intrinsically political. I think in this moment to say that your music isn’t political is at least naive, if not ignorant.

“You can’t ignore what’s going on in the world. You can’t ignore how unkind people are to one another,” says Brodovsky, who displays a sign in his home studio endorsing Avi Lewis; he played the federal NDP leader’s April rally in Winnipeg.

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Wednesday, Jul. 8, 2026

Music

SUPPLIED
Chance the Rapper plays the Canada Life Centre July 13 with Big Boi.

Chance the Rapper headed for Winnipeg on latest tour

Eva Wasney 6 minute read Preview

Chance the Rapper headed for Winnipeg on latest tour

Eva Wasney 6 minute read Wednesday, Jul. 8, 2026

Chance the Rapper made history in 2016 with the release of his third mixtape, Coloring Book.

The Chicago-born hip-hop artist released the album independently and exclusively through Apple Music, making it the first streaming-only album to earn a Grammy when Chance won Best Rap Album at the 2017 music awards.

The mixtape — which blends gospel with rap and features collaborations with Kanye West, Lil Wayne, Young Thug and others — also received wide critical acclaim.

Chance, 33, is touring North America this summer to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Coloring Book, including a stop at Canada Life Centre on Monday. Audiences can expect hits from that seminal project, along with music from his latest release, Star Line.

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Wednesday, Jul. 8, 2026

TV

Supplied by Amazing Race Canada
The Regnier brothers (Sebastien, bottom, and Sacha) came out of their Amazing Race Canada experience closer than ever.

Brotherly bond boosts local Amazing Race competitors

Grace Penner 7 minute read Preview

Brotherly bond boosts local Amazing Race competitors

Grace Penner 7 minute read Tuesday, Jul. 7, 2026

Sacha has a feeling and Sébastien has a plan — together they’ll work it out.

Winnipeg brothers and best friends Sébastien and Sacha Régnier have added “teammates” to their list of achievements as The Amazing Race Canada launches its 12th season with the siblings on board.

The reality series, which kicks off this year on Whistler Mountain in British Columbia, follows 10 pairs of competitors in a global race, vying for a prize of $250,000 and a trip around the world.

Both Sébastien and Sacha grew up playing sports, so they’re natural competitors.

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Tuesday, Jul. 7, 2026

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