The Arts – Winnipeg Free Press

Jessica Lee / Free Press files
Charlene Diehl

Thin Air director closes book on job

Ben Sigurdson 2 minute read Thursday, Dec. 4, 2025

for food cost estimator see https://staging.winnipegfreepress.com/uncategorized/2025/12/04/2026-food-cost-estimator

After 23 years at the helm of Thin Air, the Winnipeg International Writers Festival, director Charlene Diehl is stepping away to begin the next chapter in her life.

Diehl has been at the helm of what is now Plume Winnipeg, the organization that oversees Thin Air, since 2003, and will see out her role as director until the end of December.

Advertise With Us

Weather

Jan. 31, 12 PM: -12°c Cloudy with wind Jan. 31, 6 PM: -9°c Blowing snow

Winnipeg MB

-18°C, Cloudy with wind

Full Forecast

What’s up

5 minute read Thursday, Nov. 13, 2025

Neilfest

Times Change(d), 234 Main St.

Friday, 9:30 p.m.; Saturday, 3 p.m. and 9:30 p.m.

Tickets: $23 at eventbrite.ca

Read

Thursday, Nov. 13, 2025

Newfoundland artist’s fictional hockey league takes on toxic masculinity, homophobia in the sport

Jen Zoratti 7 minute read Preview

Newfoundland artist’s fictional hockey league takes on toxic masculinity, homophobia in the sport

Jen Zoratti 7 minute read Thursday, Nov. 13, 2025

The St. John’s Sissies. The Nain Nancys. The Come By Chance Flamers.

These are just some of the teams in the Queer Newfoundland Hockey League, the fictional conference at the heart of a multimedia solo exhibition of the same name by Canadian artist Lucas Morneau, which comes to Gallery 1C03 at the University of Winnipeg today.

Morneau crocheted and rug-hooked the brightly coloured, vintage-inspired jerseys — complete with logos — for all 14 of the QNHL’s teams, which are all named for pejoratives used against LGBTTQ+ communities in an act of reclamation.

It’s a strictly Newfoundland and Labrador league because Morneau, who uses they/them pronouns, grew up in Corner Brook (repped here by the Corner Brook Queens). But also, Newfoundland just has a lot of funny town names (see: Dildo, whose team in the QNHL is the Dykes, or Leading Tickles, whose team is the Lesbos).

Read

Thursday, Nov. 13, 2025

Annie France Noël photo.
Morneau’s Queer Newfoundland Hockey League project reclaims homophobic pejoratives and reimagines them as teams to root for.

Two-hander playing game of clones

Ben Waldman 4 minute read Preview

Two-hander playing game of clones

Ben Waldman 4 minute read Thursday, Nov. 13, 2025

Even though the play premièred in 2002, starring Daniel Craig and the late Michael Gambon, Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre’s version of the cloning thriller A Number is an original copy.

That’s by Caryl Churchill’s design. Aside from upholding the interlacing dialogue between a father (Victor Ertmanis) and his son (Rodrigo Beilfuss), the Obie-winning playwright leaves the rest up to interpretation. Though each successive production shares the same script, Churchill’s complete eschewal of stage direction and design notes allows for individuated artistic mutations: no two snowflakes are alike.

“All she tells us is, ‘Here are the characters,’ their ages and that the whole play takes place in the father’s home,” says Beilfuss, who, as the artistic director of Shakespeare in the Ruins, is accustomed to more clearly delineated instructions. “But that’s it — we get to come up with everything else. Could they be drinking in the scene? Does the father use a cane? Could one of the sons be wearing a baseball cap?

“Basically, we’re creating this play, our own version of it, our own world.”

Read

Thursday, Nov. 13, 2025

MIKE DEAL / FREE PRESS
Rodrigo Beilfuss plays Bernard in cloning thriller A Number.

Artificial art a threat to human creativity

Jen Zoratti 5 minute read Preview

Artificial art a threat to human creativity

Jen Zoratti 5 minute read Saturday, Nov. 8, 2025

Even if you don’t know the name Drew Struzan, you’ve definitely seen his work. It’s been shown in the odd art gallery, but you’ve likely encountered it in popcorn-scented movie theatres, or, even more likely, on your friends’ bedroom walls, that first site of personal art curation.

The American artist and illustrator created more than 150 movie posters. He was the brain behind the enduring images we have in our minds of Star Wars, E.T., The Shawshank Redemption, Bladerunner, Back to the Future and Indiana Jones. Struzan died in October at the age of 78. Earlier this year, his wife disclosed that he had Alzheimer’s and was no longer drawing.

“Iconic” is an overused adjective, often breathlessly used in the place of “popular” or “very famous.”

But what Struzan created was, indeed, iconography. When you hear the titles of some of these films, it’s very possible you think of Struzan’s soft-glow imagery before you even think of a specific scene.

Read

Saturday, Nov. 8, 2025

American artist and illustrator Drew Struzan created more than 150 movie posters – many of them iconic – including posters for movies such as Indiana Jones, Star Wars, E.T., The Shawshank Redemption, Bladerunner and Back to the Future.

Local dance pioneers leap, pirouette into hall of fame

Conrad Sweatman 4 minute read Preview

Local dance pioneers leap, pirouette into hall of fame

Conrad Sweatman 4 minute read Saturday, Nov. 8, 2025

CBC sitcom The Newsroom, created by Winnipeg-born Ken Finklemen, is unjustly forgotten, despite being years ahead of its time in terms of its shaky handheld-camera style and its biting parody of Toronto-centric CBC culture.

“But Winnipeg’s supposed to have a great symphony,” one character reassures a despondent colleague who has been reassigned to anchor in the Manitoba capital.

“Hear Winnipeg’s got a great ballet. You’ll have a good time, I swear,” says another.

Empty encouragement this may be, but Finklemen’s characters were spitting facts: Winnipeg’s orchestras and dance companies have among Canada’s most significant lineages.

Read

Saturday, Nov. 8, 2025

PHIL HOSSACK / FREE PRESS FILES
Former artistic director of the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, Arnold Spohr, is being inducted into this year’s Dance Collection Danse hall of fame.

Six-year-old’s question answered with optimistic script

Ben Waldman 5 minute read Preview

Six-year-old’s question answered with optimistic script

Ben Waldman 5 minute read Yesterday at 2:00 AM CST

A few days before the opening day of Tad & Birdy, the first of Anika Dowsett’s plays to be professionally produced, the playwright gave some dramaturgical credit to both the Barenaked Ladies and a six-year-old girl.

“OK, so the first line of the show that I ever wrote actually came directly from an interaction I had with a student when I was still teaching at (the Manitoba Theatre for Young People,” says Dowsett, who uses they/them pronouns.

“She was trying to make something with this other group of girls, and I guess they didn’t like her idea. So she was crying and we went outside to talk about it. I asked her what was going on, and she said, ‘Do you think you can still trying if your heart’s broke?’ That grammatically incorrect, earnest, lovely, between-sobs question was so big from a six-year-old and really touched a nerve for me,” remembers the 28-year-old Dowsett, who was raised in Gimli and spent over a decade learning and working at MTYP, where Tad & Birdy premières this weekend.

It was the type of question that reminded Dowsett why they loved writing theatre for young audiences, posed bravely, wisely and vulnerably, without a shred of embarrassment at either its imperfection or its uncertainty.

Read

Yesterday at 2:00 AM CST

Leif Norman photo
Samuel Benson (left) plays Birdy and Hera Nalam plays Tad in Anika Dowsett’s MTYP debut.

Learn more about Advertising solutions

Fragmentation of identities explored in updated work

Jen Zoratti 4 minute read Preview

Fragmentation of identities explored in updated work

Jen Zoratti 4 minute read Thursday, Jan. 29, 2026

At some point, we all became users and avatars. Our physical bodies became digital datasets, our desires determined by algorithm. Our attention has been fragmented; so have our identities. We exist as cells, and also as pixels.

Online, offline, reality, virtual reality — it’s all getting increasingly blurred.

Winnipeg intermedia artist Freya Björg Olafson has been thinking about this for years, particularly in the context of extended reality (XR).

XR is an umbrella term that includes augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR); even if you haven’t used it yourself, you’ve probably seen people don headsets to be fully immersed in virtual worlds. (It also sounds a lot like being on your phone.)

Read

Thursday, Jan. 29, 2026

photos by MIKAELA MACKENZIE / FREE PRESS
Freya Olafson first performed MÆ – Motion Aftereffect in Winnipeg six years ago.

What’s up

6 minute read Preview

What’s up

6 minute read Thursday, Jan. 29, 2026

Perfect Little Planet and Wilfred Buck’s Star Stories

Manitoba Museum Planetarium, 190 Rupert Ave.

Tickets $18-$24 at manitobamuseum.ca

As snow piles up on our home planet, a new children’s show opening at the Manitoba Museum Planetarium invites families to take their next vacation to the ice cliffs of Miranda, one of Uranus’s 28 moons.

Read

Thursday, Jan. 29, 2026

Emotional baggage

Ben Waldman 5 minute read Preview

Emotional baggage

Ben Waldman 5 minute read Friday, Jan. 23, 2026

Matt Baram has nothing against Naomi Snieckus’s dead grandma, but when he suggests tossing her crochet hook in the giveaway pile, Snieckus is nearly ready to file for divorce from her partner in comedy and in life.

“You might as well put my grandmother in the dumpster,” replies Snieckus.

Yes, Baram’s shrugging shoulders suggest — we might as well.

This early interaction in Big Stuff helps shape the narrative of a couple as they attempt to sort their possessions, and subsequently themselves, into and out of cardboard boxes, compartmentalizing their emotional selves according to their learned storage habits.

Read

Friday, Jan. 23, 2026

Dahlia Katz photo
Naomi Snieckus (left) and Matt Baram co-wrote and co-star in Big Stuff, a play about the psychological perils of stuff.

Couple unpacks meaning from things left behind

Ben Waldman 6 minute read Preview

Couple unpacks meaning from things left behind

Ben Waldman 6 minute read Thursday, Jan. 22, 2026

How did Matt Baram and Naomi Snieckus come up with Big Stuff, the longtime improvisers’ first joint foray into scripted theatre?

“Let’s see if we can both answer at the same time and make it make sense,” says Snieckus.

“Wait, that’s ridiculous. You go.”

Since meeting at Toronto’s Second City nearly 20 years ago, the married couple’s work has mostly occupied the world of improv comedy. But no matter how joyful those experiences — which saw them collaborate with renowned performers such as Ron Pederson, Colin Mochrie and Debra McGrath — Baram and Snieckus wanted to produce something more tangible and long-lasting than a one-night-only experience.

Read

Thursday, Jan. 22, 2026

MIKE DEAL / FREE PRESS
Matt Baram and Naomi Snieckus have been improv performers for most of their lives.

The power of one, real object in a virtual age

Stephen Borys 6 minute read Preview

The power of one, real object in a virtual age

Stephen Borys 6 minute read Thursday, Jan. 22, 2026

We live in an age of perfect images. With a few swipes of a phone, we can zoom into almost any masterpiece ever made, stream music on demand, and tour museums virtually from our living rooms. And yet, people still travel across continents, wait in long lines, and stand silently in front of objects they have already seen a thousand times online. This is not nostalgia, nor is it elitism. It is something more basic — and more human. The more virtual our world becomes, the more we seem to crave encounters with things that have survived time, and with each other.

Original works of art and historical objects carry a weight that cannot be replicated. They are not simply images or ideas; they are evidence. Art is one of humanity’s oldest languages, predating literacy, formal history, and written law. Before words, humans marked, carved, painted, and shaped objects to communicate experience, belief, and memory. These works do not merely illustrate history — they carry it. Their physical presence reminds us that someone once stood where we stand now, made something with intention, and sent it forward into time.

That sense of survival gives original objects their authority: a facsimile can show us what something looks like. Only the original confronts us with what it means.

This became clear recently with the acquisition of the Hudson’s Bay Company Royal Charter, issued on May 2, 1670, by King Charles II. The document granted exclusive trading rights over Rupert’s Land and asserted colonial authority over vast Indigenous territories for two centuries. When the original charter entered the public trust at auction in 2025, following the company’s insolvency proceedings, it was not simply a transaction. It was a civic intervention. The document now carries commitments to public access, Indigenous consultation, and responsible interpretation. A digital reproduction can convey the words. The original forces us to reckon with consequence, legacy, and responsibility.

Read

Thursday, Jan. 22, 2026

Submitted/Stephen Borys
Left to right — Barnett Newman’s Voice of Fire, Yellow Edge, and Here II at the National Gallery of Canada

What’s up

5 minute read Preview

What’s up

5 minute read Thursday, Jan. 22, 2026

Lights On the Exchange

Exchange District, various locations

On now

Lights On the Exchange is brightening up winter for the fourth year.

Read

Thursday, Jan. 22, 2026

Supplied
Jazz-folk act Chickadee is at the Centre Culturel Franco-Manitobain on Tuesday.

We interrupt this cold snap…

Ben Waldman 7 minute read Preview

We interrupt this cold snap…

Ben Waldman 7 minute read Monday, Jan. 19, 2026

Fuelled by year-round Slurpees and a lifetime supply of undergraduate angst, Winnipeg quintet Synthetic Friend released its debut EP Catching the Outlines on Friday, just in time for the group’s first headlining gig of 2026 — a coveted Saturday-night slot during Winterruption.

While Manitoba boasts one of the richest, most eclectic summer festival ecosystems in the country, Winterruption — co-produced by Real Love Winnipeg and the West End Cultural Centre — has become a frozen tentpole event for music fans in Winnipeg.

The festival, which runs Tuesday to Saturday and features more than 50 acts, matches the brightest Prairie artists with national and international counterparts at seven venues across the city: Public Domain, the Park Theatre, the Handsome Daughter, Sidestage, the WECC, Park Alleys and Shorty’s Pizza.

This year, the crop of local talent includes Synthetic Friend, featuring vocalist Emma Stevens, bassist Kaity Cummings, drummer Tomi Lawrie and guitarists Aaron Simard and Ashton Fontaine. Formed in 2023, the band has opened for Winnipeg artists including Lev Snowe, Amos the Kid and Boniface, but the Winterruption gig at the Handsome Daughter will mark the first time it has headlined a show in support of its own indie release.

Read

Monday, Jan. 19, 2026

Supplied
Synthetic Friend plays the Handsome Daughter on Saturday following the release of its new EP, Catching the Outlines.

Pondering the algo-rhythms

Conrad Sweatman 5 minute read Preview

Pondering the algo-rhythms

Conrad Sweatman 5 minute read Saturday, Jan. 17, 2026

On an episode of Da Ali G Show, Sacha Baron Cohen’s satirical persona asks a panel of bewildered experts: “Tech-mo-logy — what is that all about? Is it good or is it whack?”

The Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra would put the question in more serious terms, but it goes to the heart of its Winnipeg New Music Festival this year at a time when technology has more of us wanting to prod and troll the tech experts leading the so-called artificial intelligence revolution.

“What is going to be left for the human? I mean, we’re just casually stepping aside and ceding the world to this thing. Humanity is prepared to render itself obsolete,” says Harry Stafylakis, the WSO’s composer-in-residence and co-curator of the festival.

Maybe it’s better for our humanity to resist “progress” — and stay just a bit more stoo-pid, as Ali G would put it — than gorge on this Tree of Knowledge’s low-hanging answers for everything.

Read

Saturday, Jan. 17, 2026

Supplied
Harry Stafylakis will première his Symphony No. 3 at the WNMF during his final year as the WSO’s composer-in-residence.

Palestine through a local lens

Conrad Sweatman 4 minute read Preview

Palestine through a local lens

Conrad Sweatman 4 minute read Friday, Jan. 16, 2026

A new multimedia art exhibition at the Canadian Mennonite University campus includes contributions from more than 100 members of the Palestinian community and allies, with a special focus on local voices.

The Land Remembers, Palestine: Courage, Resilience, Resistance, which runs until Feb. 28, features textiles, family photos, paintings, a documentary by filmmaker Nilufer Rahman, posters and other mediums.

“We are a university art gallery. We welcome dialogue. We want people to engage with the contemporary lived experience of the Palestinian community, not just historical material culture,” says Sarah Hodges-Kolisnyk, director of the Mennonite Heritage Centre Gallery.

The exhibition features six unique “zones” on two floors. On the first floor is a striking breadth of cultural artifacts, including traditional Palestinian embroidery, dresses and pottery.

Read

Friday, Jan. 16, 2026

January 31, 2026

Notification Settings

Staging Breaking News

Staging Recommended Reads