What’s up: Sarah McLachlan, Paula Cole, By Divine Right, poetry tour, improv fest, send + receive festival

Sarah McLachlanCanada Life Centre, 300 PortageWednesday, 7:30 p.m.Tickets $52-$238 at Ticketmaster 

Paula Cole & Sophie B. HawkinsClub Regent Event Centre, 1425 Regent Ave. WWednesday, 7 p.m.Tickets $46-$71 at TicketmasterLilith Fair, the pioneering all-women music festival co-founded by Canadian singer/songwriter Sarah McLachlan that took place in the late ’90s, is having a major cultural moment right now thanks to Ally Pankiw’s documentary Lilith Fair: Building a Mystery — and, as it happens, two Lilith Fair alums/’90s icons will be performing in Winnipeg next week on the same night at different venues. (Wah wah.)

McLachlan’s Fumbling Towards Ecstasy 30th Anniversary Tour is finally coming to Canada Life Centre on Wednesday after being postponed for nearly a year owing to laryngitis and subsequent vocal rest. She’s commemorating her landmark album of the same name with a 17-date Canadian make-up tour that began this week in Victoria, but she also just released her first new album in nine years, Better Broken, in September. The Better Broken tour begins in the U.S. in November.

American singer/songwriter Paula Cole, whose 1996 hits Where Have All The Cowboys Gone? and I Don’t Want to Wait (which later was used as the theme song for the teen drama Dawson’s Creek) made her a household name and a Lilith Fair headliner, is currently on tour with Sophie B. Hawkins (Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover) that swings by Club Regent Event Centre, also on Wednesday.

Life of Pi's magnificent puppet menagerie ready for adventure at RMTC

The orangutan, the hyena and the Bengal tiger took millions of years of evolution to reach their modern forms. Their zoological counterparts that take the stage in Life of Pi came to life after about 3,500 hours of 3D printing.

Earlier this year, Calgary studio Puppet Stuff Canada began recreating the anthropomorphic characters that populate Yann Martel’s Booker Prize-winning novel and Lolita Chakrabarti’s Olivier Award-winning theatrical adaptation, which opens at the Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre tonight.

But the four-person team had strict instructions: its menagerie couldn’t replicate the originals used in England or during its Broadway run. From tooth to claw, each creature had to be designed, printed and assembled from scratch.

“When these Broadway shows become available for other theatres to produce, there’s two ways the rights holder will go about it. The rights holder for Little Shop of Horrors, for instance, will say this is how we built the Audrey II. Go ahead — do it. Go build the plant. In this case, the rights holder said, ‘We don’t want you to copy what we did for the first show. We want you to put your own spin on it,’” Puppet Stuff co-founder Brendan James Boyd says.

Exchange District public cigar lounge seeks to light up ‘untapped’ market

One lone public cigar lounge stands in Manitoba. That could change next month.

Family feuds get resurrected in lively Prairie Theatre Exchange comedy

Portage Place is under construction, but Prairie Theatre Exchange is open for business.

Above the silenced food court, on the third floor of the downtown shopping mall, the regional theatre company is readying for its season-opening run of Liars at a Funeral, a zippy comedy from Toronto playwright Sophia Fabiilli about a memorial service that turns out to be an elaborate sham. Mavis (Mariam Bernstein) isn’t actually dead: she just figures the news might be the one thing powerful enough to unify the warring factions of her estranged family.

Not only is the matriarch alive and well, but any rumours of PTE’s hibernation during Portage Place’s $650-million redevelopment are exaggerated and unfactual.

Ann Hodges, the company’s artistic director, says that the box office is “much more in line” with pre-COVID figures, while season subscriptions, which cratered in 2020, are experiencing a significant rebound.

Bass Pro Shops cuts second round of Winnipeg workers in 5 months

Bass Pro Shops and Cabela’s is axing 54 Winnipeg office jobs, marking the second round of layoffs in five months.

It comes as part of a restructuring the company announced in May, an unnamed spokesperson wrote in a statement.

The latest reduction — which employees learned of Tuesday — accounts for roughly two per cent of Bass Pro Shops and Cabela’s Canadian workforce.

Bass Pro Shops acquired the Cabela’s Inc. chain in 2016. Winnipeg is home to the Canadian corporate office of Cabela’s.

Winnipeggers encouraged to share civic thoughts through interactive poetry project

Jennifer Still wants you to help write the story of our city — what is, what was and what could be.

Winnipeg’s poet laureate for 2025/26 has just launched The Story of Winnipeg, a citywide poetry project in collaboration with the Winnipeg Arts Council and the Winnipeg Public Library.

Each library branch will provide participants with folded, fill-in-the-blank books that Still crafted out of City of Winnipeg maps and archival materials. People can keep their books as keepsakes, or they can send their poems back to Still via the paper mailbox stationed at each library branch in the city.

The collected poems will be shared as part of a public installation in 2026.

Building Blocks, Crumbling Foundation: Child Care in Crisis

A six-part investigation into the state of child care in Manitoba, examining the underlying issues that put kids and families at risk.

Landmarks: Exploring unique and iconic Winnipeg locations

Landmarks is a monthly feature in which columnist Alison Gillmor explores unique and iconic Winnipeg buildings and locations.

Review: On Joe’s journey, it’s people who give a street character

The wrecking ball is a meteor that predicts a sidewalk-level extinction event in marionette artist Ronnie Burkett’s Wonderful Joe, an urban journey that begins with an eviction notice delivered to a denizen who remembers when the cornerstones were laid and the first bricks were thrown.

‘It’s a win-win’: Winnipeg restaurant siblings to share new Corydon Avenue site

Like macaroni is to cheese, Kevin’s is to Stella’s — at least, at a new restaurant on Corydon Avenue.

Construction has begun on the first joint eatery between the two popular Winnipeg brands. Leadership hopes to open Kevin’s Bistro/Stella’s Cafe by year end.

“We think it’s a win-win,” said Rob Del Grosso, vice-president of operations at Stella’s. “We just know that people are looking for (this).”

He joined Stella’s, a Winnipeg-born restaurant chain, in early 2019. At the time, Stella’s was starting to grow its new venture, Kevin’s Bistro.