Complex dual production 'R+J: Closing Night' brings theatre audience in on panicked process of putting on a show

Theatre Projects Manitoba will attempt to pull off an extraordinary feat of live performance next week with a metatheatrical experiment that walks the tightrope between on-stage drama and backstage chaos.

Adorable accoutrements for the school year

By now, with only a handful of days left before summer holidays draw to a close, the back-to-school essential kit lists will be landing in inboxes throughout the province.

Comic creator unleashes talent with book bound for festival

For Glenn Hares, comic books — specifically, superhero comics — have always been a refuge, a way to both understand and escape the world.

Now, he’s prepared to release his own into the world.

“When I was in high school, I started creating characters, like this guy here,” says Hares, 40, showing a reporter a copy of the self-published Tytanium No. 0.

“Originally, he was just named Jerry Wolfe. Recently, my aunt suggested I make him neurodivergent because I based him on myself. A lot of superheroes have extraordinary, fantastic, out-of-the-ordinary powers, but they’re also just people. They live imperfect lives.”

What's Up: Smiley Face, Shari Lapena book launch, Winnipeg Comedy Showcase, Ximbombo Dance Party, Mending with Tradition

Smiley FaceDave Barber Cinematheque, 100 Arthur St.Tonight, 7 p.m.; Saturday, 3 p.m.Admission $11.50When all is said and done, and her career on screen is assessed in full, Anna Faris might just be remembered as one of the definitive comic actors of the 2000s.

Aside from starring in the Scary Movie franchise, which has been spoofing prestige and shlock for a quarter of a century, Faris, who turns 50 in November, showed off her comic chops as ex-centrefold Shelley Darlingson in the underrated 2009 film The House Bunny, creating a character who has developed a cult following. On Mom, Faris and co-star Allison Janney balanced producer Chuck Lorre’s penchant for horny humour with genuinely touching performances dealing with thorny issues such as addiction.

All those versions of Faris meet in the centre in filmmaker Gregg Araki’s 2007 stoner comedy Smiley Face, which finds Jane (Faris) sidetracked from the most straightforward mission by cannabis consumption. The extended supporting cast — featuring John Krasinski, Jane Lynch, Marion Ross, Jim Rash and Emmy winner Roscoe Lee Browne in his final role — is loads of fun, with Faris using each scene partner as a funhouse mirror to reflect her ascent into chaotic highness.

Faris, who stars in the current buddy comedy Spa Weekend, will return to more prestigious territory this fall in Primetime, director Lance Oppenheim’s dramatization of the rise of To Catch a Predator host Chris Hansen; Faris plays Mary Joan Hansen, the wife of Hansen, played by Robert Pattinson.

Morden-born filmmaker's docudrama reveals lives of harem’s wilful women

The Sultan’s Women — a docudrama written, produced and directed by Emmy- and Peabody-winning, Morden-born filmmaker David Rabinovitch which has recently become available on Tubi, depicts a harem in the turbulent final years of the Ottoman Empire, whose collapse also ended the institution.

Oddities market fills the gap in macabre curiosities

The dolls Katherine Blahut designs are the ones from your childhood — with a macabre twist.

Entrepreneur Willow Wolfe conceived and crafted a better — and cruelty-free — paint brush

NAROL — Talk about a brush with fame.

Fifteen years ago, Willow Wolfe, the founder of Willow Wolfe Painting Courses and Art Supplies, read about American actor/artist Richard Grieco’s experimentations with a style of painting he’d coined as “abstract emotionalism.”

Wolfe, whose personally designed line of synthetic paint brushes and watercolour workbooks are sold at more than 450 retailers around the globe, mailed Grieco (21 Jump Street, Veronica Mars) a set of brushes she felt would suit his needs.

The two have since remained in touch and this spring Grieco contacted Wolfe again, to let her know about a semi-autobiographical movie called The Painter he was directing and starring in.

Educating youth major priority for artist Peatr Thomas

It has to be among the biggest skateboard decks in the country, and it hangs in Peatr Thomas’s art studio on Donald Street in the Exchange District.

The four-metre deck’s artwork created by Thomas, depicts Cree skateboarder Joe Buffalo, spirit lines radiating from his airborne figure, as he becomes the first skater to jump over a massive gap (also four metres) in Montreal’s Peace Park.

“I like that idea and practice of falling and getting up again, over and over to achieve something,” says Thomas, 39.

It’s a lesson he applies to his art practice.

What’s up: Deep Purple, Sarper Güven, and Taste of Manitoba, Maryland Music, Must Be Nice Indigenous Comedy and Corn and Apple fests

Must Be Nice Indigenous Comedy FestivalDevil May Care Brewing Company, 155-A Fort St.Friday & Saturday, 7 p.m.Tickets $23 at EventbriteTreaty 1 comedians Jeff Gobeil and Kaitlynn Brightnose have had big, busy summers.

Gobeil, a member of Poplar River First Nation, is fresh off performing The Crown Witness Is a Stand-Up Comedian? at this year’s Winnipeg Fringe Theatre Festival. The hour-long solo show, which earned four stars from the Free Press, details how he reported his childhood sexual abuser to police and served as the Crown witness during the man’s trial, “with Gobeil striking a breathtaking balance between his harrowing life story and the comedic observations that have resulted,” according to our review.

He and Brightnose, who grew up between Pukatawagan and Cranberry Portage and is a regular at the Bannock Bums showcases at the Winnipeg Comedy Festival, also performed at the Indigenous Comedy Showcase before headliner Jim Gaffigan’s set at the Great Outdoors Comedy Festival in July, along with fellow comedian Noah Robinson.

On Friday, they’ll headline the first night of Must Be Nice Indigenous Comedy Festival, a two-night showcase featuring Indigenous comedians from across Treaty territories. Robinson will also perform at the fest, along with a slate of other comics including Stephan Meechas, Sherry McKay, Issa Kixen and others. Single-night and weekend passes are available at Eventbrite.

Art gallery ready to play with clay in WAG Studio Pottery Throwdown

For fans of fast-paced reality competition TV shows, there’s no need to keep watching the action through a screen.

Yayoi Kusama, who splashed polka dots across the art world, dies at 97 in Tokyo

TOKYO (AP) — Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama, who splashed her signature polka dots on paintings, sculptures and museum installations around the world, has died, her studio said Thursday. She was 97.

Kusama died Aug. 14 at a hospital in Tokyo, Yayoi Kusama Studio said, without specifying the cause of death.

“She continued to paint until her final days, never setting aside her brush, and continued exploration of forever love and eternal soul,” the studio's statement said. “We will carry forward Kusama’s wishes and, through art, continue to bring hope and strength for the future to people around the world.”

Kusama, one of Japan’s most respected contemporary artists, was widely exhibited around the world, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York and the Museum Ludwig in Germany.

Arts & Life team taste-tests new Kraft concoction

Prepare your tongue for the ultimate thrill, as Kraft Dinner has once again veered wildly out of its box and into new territory.

Library opera shows let kids take control of the action

Virtually everyone would choose a treat over a mouldy sandwich. But the youngsters attending Rufus and Rita in Winnipeg libraries often choose the latter.

Thespian has lofty goals for province’s theatre scene

Daniela Smith-Fernandez has had an eventful summer.

Her debut play, the verbose sex comedy Jean-François: plus que parfait premièred at the Winnipeg Fringe Theatre Festival in July (earning 4 1/2 stars in the Free Press).

And just a week before, in early July, Smith-Fernandez joined the Manitoba Association of Playwrights as its new company manager.

“I don’t want inclusion to be tokenism anymore. I want people to be including Manitoba plays because they’re amazing, not because they feel like they should support local,” says the 41-year-old trilingual Chilean-Canadian artist. “(At MAP) I feel like I get to be myself in a way that definitely didn’t happen when I was working in insurance.”

Wooed by wood, Cedarella founder takes pride in handcrafted designs

Marina Bulan is the founder of Cedarella, a two-year-old venture that turns out eye-catching wood products such as jewelry, kitchen decor, children’s toys and, most recently, metre-high outdoor planters that double as home street-number indicators.

Ahead of immigrating to Winnipeg a decade ago from their native Russia, Bulan and her partner thought it would be prudent to conduct some research on their soon-to-be new home, a city they knew next to nothing about.

Imagine their surprise as they were viewing the 2007 surrealist film My Winnipeg, which comically blends historical facts about our burg with what Winnipeg-born writer/director Guy Maddin has termed “mystical hypothesizing.”

(For instance, there is no proof that, as reported in the award-winning flick, Winnipeg is the sleepwalking capital of the world, and that residents keep keys to their former abodes on their person in the event they turn up there during a bout of somnambulism.)