Influential editor leaving Border Crossings after 33 years at the helm

They say that a picture tells a thousand words, but also not to judge a book by its cover.

Meeka Walsh isn’t much one for platitudes. Surveying three decades of Border Crossings’ covers, the back stories she gives — relaying what the pictures may only hint at — are peppered with qualities one recognizes from her writing as the magazine’s flagship editor: the ironic asides, the sculpted turns of phrase and the innocent name-dropping.

Walsh says she remembers every cover, too — though some are judged more warmly than others, even in an exalted light.

Currently, she’s eying the great Swiss-American photographer Robert Frank’s Watching the Crows on issue no. 152 from February 2020. Frank’s best known for his landmark The Americans — a sad, funny, rambling road chronicle of postwar America, a little like On the Road in pictures, that also electrified Jack Kerouac.

Event preview: Sākihiwē aims to inspire next gen

Sākihiwē is turning 17, a cause for celebration, inspiring Indigenous artistry and plenty of cotton candy for Alan Greyeyes, the music business pro and community builder who helped launch the event in 2009 with Aboriginal Music Manitoba.

After nearly a decade of bringing low-barrier access to music and arts in Winnipeg’s inner-city neighbourhoods, Sākihiwē received its current name — a Cree phrase meaning “to love another” — through ceremony from Sundance Chief David Blacksmith in 2018.

That name felt deeply intertwined with the annual festival’s ethos of offering accessible programming while creating Indigenous-led pathways for artistic sustainability, mentorship and representation.

“Our focus is to give Indigenous and newcomer families in Winnipeg’s core and North End access to the arts,” says Greyeyes, who also chairs the Indigenous Music Office — a national body aimed at uplifting, empowering and strengthening Indigenous music creators, families and communities.

Bland casting keeps rock opera from reaching divine heights

In the ballad I Don’t Know How to Love Him from the rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar, Mary Magdalene sings about Jesus, “I don’t see why he moves me.”

She tries to tell herself, “He’s just a man,” but she’s thrown off by the deep mystery and magnetism of his presence — a man and yet not a man; familiar and yet unreachable.

In great productions of the landmark 1970 work by composer Andrew Lloyd Webber and lyricist Tim Rice, and in the unforgettable 1973 movie version, the troubled Jesus has the same effect on the audience as he does on Mary.

He has a spiritual aura, radiates otherworldly charisma and seems all-knowing. But as he endures the final week of his life, he’s also movingly human — increasingly frustrated with his followers and doubting his own strength to finish what God has started.

Palestinian Canadians share keepsakes, memories in CMHR’s Nakba exhibition

Fouad Sahyoun was four years old when his family fled their home in Haifa amid bombardment from encroaching Israeli paramilitary forces in 1948.

“We took a few suitcases and (some) money and we went to Alexandria. We were never allowed to go back,” said Sahyoun, a Palestinian Canadian living in Montreal. “When the money ran out, we became real refugees.”

The 82-year-old is one of an estimated 750,000 Palestinians forcibly displaced in 1948 following the partitioning of Palestine and during the creation of the State of Israel. This event is known as the Nakba, which means “catastrophe” in Arabic.

Sahyoun’s story and the deeds to his family’s seized property in Haifa are included in Palestine Uprooted: Nakba Past and Present, a new exhibition open to the public Saturday at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights.

Golf course maintenance as much art as science for dedicated team

At a golf course, grass is more than just ground cover; it’s a precisely engineered, living patchwork.

Chorus of voices defines WJT’s upcoming season

A drama about circumcision, a Tony-winning musical and an abbreviated history of the Jewish people from the pen of a Manitoban performing arts legend are being served up next season by the Winnipeg Jewish Theatre, artistic director Dan Petrenko announced Wednesday.

What's up: Graffiti Boat Tour, book launch, Canada Day, Neurohilarity Pride and more

Winnipeg Graffiti Boat TourThe Forks

Sunday, 4 p.m. 5:30 p.m. and 7 p.m.

Tickets $21-$30 from winnipegwaterways.ca

Join Winnipeg graffiti pioneer Pat Lazo during this hour-long river boat tour and learn about the culture and communities that shaped the city’s art scene

Winnipeg-raised artist having pinch-me moment in U.K.

As an artist, Joel Nichols has spent a lot of time in London’s National Portrait Gallery, looking for inspiration.

Rainbow Stage takes biblical rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar to its outdoor stage

What’s the buzz at Rainbow Stage? We’ll tell you what’s-a-happening.

For the first time in its seven-decade history, the country’s longest continually operating outdoor theatre company is producing Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s Jesus Christ Superstar, one of the most admired rock operas ever made, fashioned in the 1960s after “the greatest story ever told.”

The musical, which began as a concept album before reaching movie theatres in 1973, has been on director Sharon Bajer’s mind for decades: director Norman Jewison’s swaggering version was the first movie musical the Winnipeg performer saw rerun on television.

“I thought it was just so strange,” says the British Columbia-raised Bajer, whose first musical theatre role was in Jesus Christ Superstar in Grade 9, playing a leper. “Growing up, I always had a vision of doing it outside, so when Rainbow approached me about directing it, I thought, at least we’re going to be outside in the elements.”

Tattoo artists beset by requests for unworkable AI pieces

As a professional tattooist with eight years of ink on her fingers, Justine Proulx is used to getting all sorts of requests from clients looking to decorate their bodies with memories, tributes and reminders. But over the past six months, the Winnipeg artist has noticed some troublesome trends.

The beauty of the bleak

Summer has officially begun, and the Dave Barber Cinematheque is ringing in the season with a seven-day festival full of despairing, shocking and unpleasant cinema.

Lead film programmer Olivia Norquay could hardly wait for Bleak Week.

Started in Los Angeles by the American Cinematheque in 2022, this year, the festival is expanding to 73 cities and nearly 100 theatres across the U.S., Canada, England, Scotland, Mexico, Uruguay, Argentina and Chile. Each venue then plots its own program of “uncompromising” films that “wholly embrace a cinema of despair in pursuit of unpleasant truths and raw empathy.”

Norquay — who selected 17 films from directors such as Béla Tarr (The Turin Horse), Agnès Varda (Vagabond), Michael Haneke (Funny Games) and Barbara Loden (Wanda) — says that even though this is the first year of participation for Winnipeg’s only downtown movie theatre, programming bleakness is nothing new at the Dave Barber Cinematheque.

Epic performance, but Shakespeare in the Ruins’ The Iliad suffers from identity crisis

War is hell. But it’s also, as playwrights Lisa Peterson and Denis O’Hare pointedly remind us in their stage adaptation of Homer’s The Iliad (translated by Robert Fagles), all too sadly predictable; bloodlust has run in the veins of humankind from time immemorial.

Bringing remains on planes a real pain

Vincent Masse holds up a snack-size Ziploc containing ashes belonging to his late dog Balthazar.

While smugglers sometimes successfully whisk other bagged powders past airport security, this one barely made it through.

“The Halifax security were all going like this,” says Masse’s new friend Kerri Parnell, crossing her fingers. She means they were hoping that the airport’s new CT X-ray scanners for carry-on bags, installed at Canadian airports over the past couple of years, would not once again flag Balthazar’s remains.

That’s what they had done the day before, leading Masse to miss his flight — and costing him about $1,000 to rebook.

New artistic director brings spirit of adventure to opera job

Manitoba Opera’s new artistic director is bringing his baton home.

What’s up: Franco Foot, Moth Dreamer book launch, Brunchfest, Garden Party in the Gallery, Tönky Hönk release

Franco FootCentre culturel franco-manitobain, 340 Provencher Blvd.Through June 26Free entry, reservations at ccfm.mb.caLooking for somewhere cool to cheer on Morocco (5 p.m.) and Haiti (7:30 p.m.) this vendredi, Ivory Coast (3 p.m.) on samedi, or Egypt (8 p.m.) this coming dimanche?

Head to the Centre culturel franco-manitobain for Franco Foot, the St. Boniface venue’s ongoing celebration of the French-speaking nations playing for international glory in the FIFA men’s World Cup. With free access for all attendees, it’s a perfect way to catch the match alongside a community of family, friends and respectful rivals. A full schedule is available at ccfm.mb.ca.

After the games end on Saturday, the CCFM’s Le Patio 340 will be bumping when folk duo Burnstick takes the stage. Follow the Call singer Kwiat — an avant-pop singer whose music has hints of Fiona Apple and Regina Spektor — is also set to play. The free concert begins at 8 p.m.

— Ben Waldman