What’s up

Smut Slam

• Limelight Karaoke Bar, The Riverside Hotel, 531 St. Mary’s Road
• Tonight, 8-10 p.m.
• Tickets: $17.40 at Eventbrite

Created by Berlin-based award-winning playwright and performer Cameryn Moore, this Smut Slam is an open-mic night inviting audience members to share their real-life sex stories.

Anyone can sign up — the only criteria is your story must be real and personal. Each person gets five minutes on the mic to share on the theme Team Work. The top three slammers will be rewarded with a gift certificate worth up to $150 at adult toy store Love Nest.

Nervous about letting it all out on stage? Don’t worry: there’s a chance to anonymously ask questions and share your confession, or you can just sit back, observe and listen.

Hosted by producer and performer DD Brassiere, Smut Slam is a queer-friendly, kink-friendly, body-positive space for people from all walks of life. Strictly an 18+ night, stories involving any form of discrimination are not welcome.

The venue is in the basement of the hotel, with access via stairs. There is a non-binary bathroom on site. Please contact Limelight for queries regarding accessibility.

— AV Kitching

 

Blind Date with a Book

• The Handsome Daughter, 61 Sherbrook St.
• Monday, 6-9 p.m.
• Free

Ever go on a blind date with a book?

These popular mystery book exchanges have been taking place at bookstores and libraries for many years; the Handsome Daughter makes the concept into more of a social outing.

How it works is this: wrap a book (used preferred) in paper — might we suggest the funny pages from the Free Press? — and write (or draw) a few clues on the front to give readers a sense of the book’s genre or plot without giving away the author or title. No judging a book by its cover here.

At the venue, drop your book in the take-and-leave box and select a wrapped book for yourself. Order some food from Hoagie Boyz, partake in all-day Monday happy hour (a pilsner and a shot for $10), and tuck into your next great read while hanging out with your fellow bookworms.

— Jen Zoratti

 

Beer is Art

• WAG-Qaumajuq, 300 Memorial Blvd.
• Thursday, April 2, 7-10 p.m.
• Tickets $69

Manitoba brewers will once again be pouring their masterpieces among the works of art on display at WAG-Qaumajuq.

The third Beer is Art event takes place Thursday, April 2, from 7 to 10 p.m. and feature the bulk of Manitoba’s purveyors of craft beer and cider. Expect a mix of core pours from producers as well as small-batch and one-off beers made special for Beer is Art.

Participating breweries, brew pubs and contract brewers include Sookram’s, Bookstore Brewing, Nonsuch, Good Neighbour, Kilter, Torque, Dastardly Villain, Lake of the Woods and almost everyone else making beer in Manitoba.

Tickets include all samples and access to galleries throughout WAG-Qaumajuq. Brewers will be spread out throughout the gallery, with each room featuring different music and vibes.

If paintings and pilsners or sculptures and stouts (or sours) sounds up your alley, you’d best not wait — the previous two Beer is Art events sold out, and this year’s event is likely to fill up quickly as well.

— Ben Sigurdson

 

Brazil Before Bossa

• West End Cultural Centre, 586 Ellice Ave.
• Saturday, 8 p.m.
• Tickets $20-$25 at wecc.ca

A Mennonite vocalist and a Brazilian guitarist walk into a bar … and deliver a musical history lesson built on cross-cultural collaboration.

Amber Epp, a prolific Latin jazz performer from rural Manitoba, and Emmanuel Bach, a guitarist and composer who moved to Winnipeg from Brazil during the COVID-19 pandemic, have become unlikely musical partners in recent years.

On Saturday, the pair take the stage at the West End Cultural Centre for Brazil Before Bossa — a concert that traces the history of bossa nova music, which spring from the foundational genres of choro and samba-canção.

Epp will sing in Portuguese with Bach on guitar and cavaquinho, a small four-stringed instrument similar to a ukulele. Bassist Karl Kohut, drummer Fabio Ragnelli and guest vocalist Zachary Rushing also perform.

— Eva Wasney

 

French Film Festival

• Dave Barber Cinematheque, 100 Arthur St.
• Friday to Sunday
• Admission $7-$11.50

Alliance Française du Manitoba returns to the Dave Barber Cinematheque this weekend for its 11th annual festival of French-language films, a well-curated, interconnected program that kicks off Friday night with the crowd-pleasing culinary comedy Tous toqués (All Stirred Up!), directed by Quebec’s Manon Briand.

Later on Friday, in Alice Vial’s magical romantic drama L’Âme Idéale (You Found Me), a palliative care physician who can communicate with the dead meets a man who doesn’t know his life is over. Pair that with legendary director Costa-Gavra’s Le Dernier Souffle (The Last Breath), in which a doctor (César winner Kad Merad) and a famous writer (three-time nominee Denis Podalydès) discuss life and death in a hospital setting.

On Sunday, check in with Fanon, which explores political thinker and activist Frantz Fanon’s time as the head of psychiatry at an Algerian hospital during that country’s war for independence.

If literary adaptations are your thing, the fest has you covered with two from last year that have yet to screen in Manitoba. François Ozon’s version of Camus’s L’Étranger (The Stranger) and Éric Besnard’s Jean Valjean, which sets the first 100 pages of Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables to the screen. A full schedule, and ticketing information, is available at davebarbercinematheque.com.

Sit back with your bag of maïs soufflé or le pop-corn — whichever you prefer.

— Ben Waldman

 

Mari Padeanu

• The Sound Gallery, 210 Princess Ave.
• Saturday, 3:30 p.m.
• Free

Mari Padeanu is just a little old-fashioned.

In the musical sense, that is: rhyming lyrics, proper bridges, key changes and modulating melodies that don’t feel just like riffs or nursery songs. No loops. The classic songwriting elements of standards, from Billy Strayhorn to the Beatles.

On the other hand, Padeanu’s irony-poisoned humour feels more generational.

“I’m terminally online,” says the 25-year-old singer-songwriter, who performs an acoustic set at the Sound Gallery (as part of their ongoing live music series) on Saturday.

Since releasing The Fool in 2025, Padeanu is at work on a sophomore album, with Slob as its promised title.

“The songs are very journalistic and they help me get through uncomfortable issues I’m having,” says Padeanu.

So are all these sad-sack album titles autobiographical?

“Big time. What can I say? My parents are divorced and I’m queer,” says Padaneau with a laugh.

— Conrad Sweatman