The Arts

Opinion

George Walker IV / Associated Press Files Phoebe Bridgers performs as the opening act for Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour in 2023 in Nashville, Tenn. Bridgers’ Toronto show was a phone-free experience.

Phoneless concert a beautiful chance to bask in moment

Jen Zoratti 6 minute read Saturday, Oct. 10, 2026

Outside the Scotiabank Arena in Toronto, digital billboards flashed fans their singular photo op for the night: “I took this photo before I saw Phoebe Bridgers: The Lost Tour 2026.”

It is, as it is for so many other people, my only documentation of a concert by one of my favourite artists. The American singer-songwriter — who I discovered at the Winnipeg Folk Festival in 2018 — has had a meteoric rise in the past few years, winning three Grammys in 2024 as one third of Boygenius, the indie-rock supergroup rounded out by Lucy Dacus and Julien Baker, and opening for Taylor Swift on select dates of her titanic Eras Tour.

Now, Bridgers is touring in support of Lost Weekend, her third album and first since 2020’s Punisher. It’s a feat of a record, a richly textured meditation on loss and grief, written in the aftermath of the death of her dad, with whom she had a complicated relationship.

So she is in a position to not only play multiple sold-out arena shows, but also insist that those shows be phone-free.

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Music

Supplied Sean Irvine wrote Forgotten Stories Suite as a way to tell stories of queer experience.

Stellar year for Manitoba artists at WCMAs

Ben Waldman 4 minute read Preview

Stellar year for Manitoba artists at WCMAs

Ben Waldman 4 minute read Friday, Oct. 9, 2026

Manitoba acts earned top honours at this past weekend’s Western Canadian Music Awards in Victoria, including pop artist of the year for Begonia, a francophone artist of the year award for Jocelyn Baribeau, video director of the year for Taylor Brown and two awards for the Brandon-raised Fontine, who took home prizes for rock artist and Indigenous artist of the year.

It was double time for the Winnipeg Jazz Orchestra, which for the second consecutive year was named Western Canada’s jazz artist of the year.

The recognition comes on the strength of the WJO’s most recent recording, Forgotten Stories Suite, a project by local woodwind specialist Sean Irvine that blends spoken word, instrumental soundscapes and sung vocals to amplify stories of queer experience.

“As I started becoming a composer, I was thinking about what I had to say,” says Irvine, a musician with a doctorate of jazz performance from the University of Toronto and a master’s in performance and literature from Brandon University.

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Friday, Oct. 9, 2026

The Arts

Ruth Bonneville / Free Press Chase Winnicky is directing Dancing With the Past, which opens each show of the Gargoyle Theatre’s upcoming four-day festival.

Theatre fest puts queer stories onstage

Ben Waldman 5 minute read Preview

Theatre fest puts queer stories onstage

Ben Waldman 5 minute read Friday, Oct. 9, 2026

Two sets of scene partners will bring stories of personal and national queer liberation to the stage this week as part of Past, Present, Future, a mini festival of original LGBTTQ+ works at the Gargoyle Theatre.

The four-day event kicks off tonight at 7:30 p.m., with the world première of Ottawa playwright Lawrence Aronovitch’s Dancing With the Past — starring Winnipeg’s Jeff Rivet and Ro Rogalski — and a restaging of Winnipeg playwright Ethan Stark’s romance A Work in Progress, featuring local actors Sadie Kornovski and Mady Richard.

Winnipeg’s première of Dancing With the Past will launch a nationwide Inspire tour, produced by the global advocacy organization International Day of Pink in association with the Gargoyle, the federal government and Via Rail.

The tour will head to Alberta, British Columbia, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island before visiting Ontario and Quebec in the spring.

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Friday, Oct. 9, 2026

The Arts

Wojtek Kutyla photo Cory Doctorow

What’s up

6 minute read Preview

What’s up

6 minute read Friday, Oct. 9, 2026

Usama Siddiquee

West End Cultural Centre, 586 Ellice Ave.

Tonight, 8 p.m.

Tickets are $46.75 at wecc.ca

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Friday, Oct. 9, 2026

The Arts

MIKE DEAL / FREE PRESS Amanda Goldberg is directing the Royal MTC production of Cyrano.

Beautiful beak

Ben Waldman 6 minute read Preview

Beautiful beak

Ben Waldman 6 minute read Friday, Oct. 9, 2026

There are more flattering places to have your body described than in a book called Les Grotesques, but it was in that 1844 work that French readers such as playwright Edmond Rostand were reintroduced to a 17th-century firebrand named Cyrano de Bergerac, the subject of Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre’s season-opening production.

Yes, he was real.

And yes, his nose was apparently spectacular.

“Less doughy, less fleshy in its contours, it shows more bone and cartilage, more flat planes and highlights — it is most heroic,” wrote French poet Théophile Gautier, sparing no detail in his facial analysis.

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Friday, Oct. 9, 2026

The Arts

MIKE DEAL / FREE PRESS Sally Ito is the new writer-in-residence for the Winnipeg Public Library.

Ito in the house

Sheldon Birnie 5 minute read Preview

Ito in the house

Sheldon Birnie 5 minute read Friday, Oct. 9, 2026

It didn’t take Sally Ito long to settle into her new role as the Winnipeg Public Library’s latest writer-in-residence.

“The library itself is such a fascinating place,” Ito says in her new office on the second floor of the Millennium Library downtown on her first day on the job.

“There are all kinds of books here, and all kinds of people. I want to explore both the books and the people.”

A Japanese-Canadian writer, translator and instructor of creative writing at Canadian Mennonite University, Ito’s most recent poetry collection, Heart’s Hydrography, was published by Turnstone Press in 2022. She previously served as writer-in-residence at the University of Manitoba’s Centre for Creative Writing and Oral Culture.

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Friday, Oct. 9, 2026

The Arts

Royal Winnipeg Ballet workers join MGEU

Jen Zoratti 3 minute read Friday, Oct. 9, 2026

Workers at the Royal Winnipeg Ballet have unionized.

The RWB workers’ application to join the Manitoba Government and General Employees’ Union as a single bargaining unit was approved by the Manitoba Labour Board Thursday.

The new Local 466 will include employees of both the RWB and the RWB School, including teaching staff, student boarding staff and accompanists as well as those working in marketing, development, facilities and security, data services, finance, food services and administration.

Physiotherapists, students of the RWB School and employees represented by another bargaining unit will not be members of Local 466.

The Arts

SUPPLIED Virgo Rising are (from left) Lauren Wittmann, Jenna Wittmann, Emily Sinclair and Isaac Tate.

Virgo Rising’s debut LP is visceral, vulnerable

Ben Waldman 6 minute read Preview

Virgo Rising’s debut LP is visceral, vulnerable

Ben Waldman 6 minute read Friday, Oct. 2, 2026

Lauren Wittmann’s apartment was bright and trinket-filled, and Emily Sinclair felt nostalgia for it as soon as she walked through the door.

It was 2018 or so, and as Sinclair, the lead vocalist for Winnipeg indie quartet Virgo Rising, tells it, crossing the transom and kicking off her shoes into a pile of strange soles felt like “bursting into the world” for the very first time.

“I was finally meeting my people,” Sinclair recalls.

A few years later, that same unit came up for rent, and Sinclair moved in, unboxing her possessions and hanging her frames on the hammered nails of prior tenants.

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Friday, Oct. 2, 2026

The Arts

Mike Latschislaw photo PhD student Clara Xie, a visiting researcher at the University of Manitoba, shows off a robot companion.

Robot study gives seniors say in era of AI

Conrad Sweatman 4 minute read Preview

Robot study gives seniors say in era of AI

Conrad Sweatman 4 minute read Thursday, Oct. 1, 2026

It’s no longer the stuff of sci-fi: AI sidekicks that simulate emotional support and guide routines.

Robot companions are increasingly becoming part of everyday life for seniors, with certain U.S. states even subsidizing such devices for personal use through public health-care programs.

Among the many ethical questions this raises: what’s to be done with these robots, and all the secrets and personal data they carry, after the owner dies?

“We don’t know the answers. That’s why I’m running a study. It’s a participatory study with seniors,” said Clara Xie, a PhD student in computer science at the University of Calgary, who is conducting research at the University of Manitoba.

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Thursday, Oct. 1, 2026

The Arts

Leif Norman photo From left: Steven Ratzlaff, Tracey Nepinak and Sarah Constible in The Bloody Theatre.

Psychological drama pairs parables to ask big questions

Ben Waldman 5 minute read Preview

Psychological drama pairs parables to ask big questions

Ben Waldman 5 minute read Thursday, Oct. 1, 2026

The Bloody Theatre is an apt title for playwright Steven Ratzlaff’s latest work, a twisty parable of faith, fortune and consequence that required the crew to familiarize themselves with several tools of torture.

Some of those implements have been Frankensteined together by sound designer and musician Jesse Krause, including a “torture cello,” whose warping wails serve as a sonic stand-in for creaking floorboards, swinging doors and instances of suffering that director Bill Kerr knew would be too visceral to be shown onstage.

The Bloody Theatre isn’t necessarily a Halloween story, but with its blend of religious parable, historical martyrdom and psychological drama, it fits right into spooky season.

Produced by local collective Untimely Theatre, Ratzlaff’s script examines principles of communal responsibility, juxtaposing the present-day journey of an unhoused — by choice — Winnipeg woman named Heidi (Sarah Constible) with a verbatim staging of Martyr’s Mirror of the Defenseless Christians, a 17th-century Dutch text that includes heresy trial transcripts detailing the suppression of Anabaptist beliefs under Lutheran, reform or Catholic majorities in Europe.

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Thursday, Oct. 1, 2026

The Arts

Mike Sudoma/Free Press Singer/Songwriter Sam Singer performs at Sidestage tonight, providing local support for Albertans Starpainter and Carter Felker.

What’s up

6 minute read Preview

What’s up

6 minute read Thursday, Oct. 1, 2026

Connection: Recent Work from Artist Moms 2.0

Community Art Gallery at the Pavilion, Assiniboine Park, 55 Pavilion Cres.

Artist talk Saturday, 2 p.m.

Free

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Thursday, Oct. 1, 2026

Opinion

Eric Zachanowich / Netflix Crosby Fitzgerald, from left, Luke Bracey, Corvin Mack, and Xander Cole as Little Puma in Netflix’s Manitoba-shot Little House on the Prairie.

Winnipeg a character all its own onscreen

Jen Zoratti 4 minute read Preview

Winnipeg a character all its own onscreen

Jen Zoratti 4 minute read Saturday, Sep. 26, 2026

Watch something shot in Winnipeg with a Winnipegger, and you will be treated to a live running commentary. We can’t help playing “spot the location.”

When we recognize that field/statue/mall/intersection/theatre, we have to say it. It’s practically civically mandated.

A friend told me she was at a film screening at which people literally applauded footage of the Mint. (That likely would have been 2005’s The Constant Gardener.)

Being excited about seeing Portage Place Mall at Christmastime in the trailer for Violent Night 2 — and then exclaiming, to your husband, “Oh, look, it’s Portage Place Mall at Christmastime!” — is not, I will admit, particularly cosmopolitan behaviour. In fact, I could be accused of suffering from a mild case of Podunkitis.

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Saturday, Sep. 26, 2026

The Arts

Ruth Bonneville / Free Press Jennifer Gibson, curator of Gallery 1C03 says Lux et Veritas Floreant / Let Light and Truth Flourish, says the exhibition is another way to engage one’s senses differently.

U of W marks gallery’s anniversary with group alumni exhibition

Jen Zoratti 6 minute read Preview

U of W marks gallery’s anniversary with group alumni exhibition

Jen Zoratti 6 minute read Friday, Sep. 25, 2026

Lux et veritas floreant, or Let light and truth flourish, is the University of Winnipeg’s motto.

It’s also a fitting title — and guiding theme — for a group exhibition celebrating the 40th anniversary of Gallery 1C03, the university’s campus art gallery.

Curated by Gallery 1C03 director and curator Jennifer Gibson and independent curator Jenny Western — both university alumni themselves — Lux et Veritas Floreant features works by U of W alumni artists KC Adams, Dee Barsy, Scott Benesiinaabandan, Jaimie Isaac, Judah Iyunade, Kegan McFadden, Shivanya Ra, Paul Robles and Melanie Zurba.

There is also a film component. A 7 p.m. screening tonight at Dave Barber Cinematheque features 10 films by alumni artists, including Steve Bates, Ian Bawa, Mahlet Cuff, Christina Hajjar, Mike Maryniuk, Kevin Settee, Leslie Supnet and Ted Turner. Isaac and Iyunade also have films in the program.

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Friday, Sep. 25, 2026

The Arts

Ruth Bonneville / Free Press Tara Cole-McCaffrey credits stylish family members for getting her started on her fashion journey.

Winnipegger’s attic boutique bucks fast-fashion habits

AV Kitching 7 minute read Preview

Winnipegger’s attic boutique bucks fast-fashion habits

AV Kitching 7 minute read Thursday, Sep. 24, 2026

While most of us are likely to chuck on a hoodie and sweatpants for a last-minute dash to the store, Tara Cole-McCaffrey’s early morning run to pick up a carton of milk probably involves sequins, biker boots or a frilly maxi dress — or all three.

It’s a fitting look for someone who owns her own by-appointment-only vintage showroom, Patron of Dreams. But she’s not dressed up deliberately; Cole-McCaffrey just grabbed whatever she could find by her bed before heading out.

“I wear what I own; I don’t have basics,” says Cole-McCaffrey, 48. “If I had sweats and a wrinkled T-shirt sitting on the floor, that’s what I would have put on, because it was convenience I was looking for.

“But if you buy clothes that are fun and interesting, that is what becomes convenient, because that’s what’s in your closet.”

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Thursday, Sep. 24, 2026

The Arts

MIKE DEAL / FREE PRESS Ryan Smoluk took art lessons at the Winnipeg Art Gallery as a child.

Winnipeg artist’s solo exhibition invites viewers on a disorienting, rewarding journey

Jen Zoratti 5 minute read Preview

Winnipeg artist’s solo exhibition invites viewers on a disorienting, rewarding journey

Jen Zoratti 5 minute read Tuesday, Sep. 22, 2026

Ryan Smoluk’s Maze City, on now at WAG-Qaumajuq, is a full circle moment.

The Winnipeg visual artist took art classes as a kid at the Winnipeg Art Gallery, his work first exhibited there as part of Through the Eyes of a Child.

Since then, his art — informed by his perspectives and experiences as an artist with autism — has been exhibited internationally, and Smoluk has worked with the United Nations, the New York Stock Exchange, Apple, the Manitoba Government, Manitoba Opera Society, Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra and a host of others.

And now, his work is back on the walls of the WAG, this time in his first solo exhibition at the city’s largest gallery.

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Tuesday, Sep. 22, 2026

The Arts

MIKAELA MACKENZIE / FREE PRESS Bria Fernandes with her new show, Things Left Unsaid, at Gallery 1C03 in the University of Winnipeg on Wednesday, Sept. 10, 2025. For Jen story. Free Press 2025

Quilt tradition from Underground Railroad period big part of new exhibition

Conrad Sweatman 6 minute read Preview

Quilt tradition from Underground Railroad period big part of new exhibition

Conrad Sweatman 6 minute read Friday, Sep. 18, 2026

Long before she became a professional quilter, Melinda Clayton Patterson used to watch her mother make quilts from clothing scraps and cardboard templates.

“I came from a family of 14 kids, so going to whatever the store was back then, K-Mart or Woolworth, to buy quilts or blankets for 14 kids was just not feasible because the people were not wealthy,” she says.

“Quilts were not viewed as art. But when I came to Winnipeg, I started taking quilting seriously in my 30s … the heritage came later.”

Today, the 61-year-old native of East Preston, N.S., lives in Winnipeg, stitching together stories of her Black Loyalist heritage and Preston’s foundational role in the birth of Canadian Black culture.

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Friday, Sep. 18, 2026

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