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    Hit Play About U.S. Constitution Debuts in Canada. Amended, of Course.

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    How do you retool “What the Constitution Means to Me” for those unfamiliar with the U.S. Constitution? Consult Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms.“What the Constitution Means to Me,” Heidi Schreck’s Tony-nominated exploration of the document’s gender and racial biases, will be the most performed work in the United States for the second year in a row. And this week, just days before the U.S. presidential election, it will have its Canadian premiere.The timing is intentional. By presenting the work starting Friday, at the Soulpepper Theater in Toronto, its artistic director, Weyni Mengesha, said she wants the production to not only inspire Canadian audiences to pay attention to what’s happening in the United States but also in their own political sphere.“Things that happen down south affect things up here,” Mengesha said. “And we’re feeling a similar sense of divisiveness.”Canadians are contending with a housing crisis, sky-high grocery bills, debates about immigration, and a leader — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau — whose own party wants him to step down.But how do you retool a highly specific work for audiences who may be unfamiliar with the finer points of the U.S. Constitution?Toward the end of U.S. productions of “What the Constitution Means to Me,” the protagonist debates a high schooler about whether to keep or scrap the U.S. Constitution. In Toronto, the production’s star, Amy Rutherford, and a local student will instead debate the merits of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which was created in 1982 as part of the country’s Constitution.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Lhasa’s Music Captivated Audiences Everywhere but Here

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      At Pop Montreal, tribute concerts on Sept. 29 and 30 will honor the memory of Lhasa de Sela, the American-born multilingual singer-songwriter.Montreal’s wide-ranging music scene has been one of its calling cards for decades, with border-crossing success stories like the ambitious rock band Arcade Fire, the arty electro-pop artist Grimes and the renowned post-rock modernists Godspeed You! Black Emperor. Yet one of the musicians most beloved there is the spellbinding Lhasa de Sela, who wrote and sang in English, French and Spanish, but remains largely unknown in the United States.She was usually referred to simply as Lhasa, and before she died of breast cancer in 2010 at 37, she became a platinum-selling recording artist in Canada, with genre-busting albums that synthesized Romani music, Mexican rancheras, Portuguese fados, Americana, chansons française and South American ballads, marrying them with mystical, romantic and intensely personal lyrics.In Europe, where Lhasa was a mainstay of the festival circuit, and lived in Marseilles for several years, she became a star on the strength of her intimate performances. But in the United States, where she was born and spent most of her childhood, Lhasa’s multilingual recordings proved too much of a marketing challenge for her American record companies, even after she toured with Sarah McLachlan’s traveling festival, Lilith Fair.Feist, Calexico, Juana Molina, Silvana Estrada and many other stars will perform in the tribute concerts that will cap this year’s Pop Montreal festival on Sept. 29 and 30. Their homage underscores an enduring love affair between a city and an artist who made just three otherworldly albums, including a last, self-titled album, all in English, that she hoped would finally establish her in her home country.Bia Krieger, the Brazilian-born, Montreal-based singer who was a friend of Lhasa’s, said, “Iconic is the right word” to describe her. “There’s a circle of people here that cherish her.”Lhasa is now even woven into the landscape of her old neighborhood, Mile End, which is anchored at its southern end by a huge mural of the singer created by a local artist, Annie Hamel, and, on the north by Parc Lhasa de Sela, a children’s playground the city erected in her memory.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in Theater

      Shaw Festival Presents ‘The Orphan of Chao’ and ‘Snow in Midsummer’

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      By presenting “The Orphan of Chao” and “Snow in Midsummer,” the Shaw Festival is helping “the past to smash its way into the modern world.”For 35 years, the Shaw Festival had one central criterion for its programming: Any and all plays had to have been written during George Bernard Shaw’s lifetime.This is not as confining as it sounds. Shaw, after all, was born in 1856 — when Abraham Lincoln was still an Illinois lawyer — and died a few months after Charles Schulz’s “Peanuts” hit the comics pages in 1950.Nonetheless, two of the festival’s nine productions this season fall well before that time period. “The Orphan of Chao” and “Snow in Midsummer” are adaptations of perhaps the two best-known plays from the Yuan period of classical Chinese drama, which stretched from 1279 to 1368.“To twin ‘Orphan’ with ‘Snow’ gives our audience the chance to see two very different approaches to legendary material,” said Tim Carroll, the Shaw Festival’s artistic director. “Both pieces, in very different ways, allow the past to smash its way into the modern world.”At the center of this confluence is Nina Lee Aquino, one of the most significant figures in Canadian theater. The festival not only enlisted Aquino to direct “Snow” (her debut there), but also cast her husband, Richard Lee, an actor and fight director, and their 17-year-old actress daughter, Eponine Lee, in both plays.The director Nina Lee Aquino, center, with her husband, Richard Lee, and their daughter, Eponine.Katie GalvinWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Movies

      ‘Twice Colonized’ Review: Untangling the Personal and Political

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      This documentary follows a renowned Inuit activist over seven years, making sense of the ways in which racism and impoverishment can abrade one’s sense of self.The charismatic Inuit lawyer Aaju Peter is no stranger to cinema. Some viewers will know her from films like “Arctic Defenders” (2013), about Inuit activists’ struggle for self-government, and “Angry Inuk” (2016), which follows an Inuit campaign to allow seal hunting. Peter returns to the screen in “Twice Colonized,” but this time, the focus is not on her fight against colonialist policies. It’s on Peter’s fight with herself — with all the wounds that colonization has inflicted on her life and her soul.Peter grew up in Greenland, a Danish territory, in the 1960s and, as was common with high-performing young students, was shipped off to high school in Denmark. Later in life, she moved to the Canadian Arctic. In “Twice Colonized,” which follows Peter closely across seven years, she contends with her life under Danish and then Canadian colonialism, and the corrosive separations from her language, culture and family that assimilation required. Both she and the director, Lin Alluna, take on a difficult task: untangling the personal and the political, making sense of the ways in which racism and impoverishment can abrade one’s sense of self.Much like its heroine, “Twice Colonized” is a storm of emotion and conviction. Peter is tortured and vulnerable as she mourns her son’s death by suicide and struggles to break up with her abusive partner; she is also joyful and strong as she communes with other Indigenous people on her travels and speaks forcefully about Inuit rights on global platforms.The film seems to writhe alongside her, with shaky camerawork, jagged cuts and a haunting soundtrack full of breathy chants. If it can feel haphazard and narratively unsatisfying at times, it’s also thrilling in the way it matches Peter’s rhythms, refusing to sand down her defiant complexity.Twice ColonizedNot rated. In Danish, English, Greenlandic and Inuktitut, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 31 minutes. Available to rent or buy on most major platforms. More

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      in Movies

      Donald Sutherland, ‘M*A*S*H’ and ‘Hunger Games’ Star, Dies at 88

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      Donald Sutherland, whose ability to both charm and unsettle, both reassure and repulse, was amply displayed in scores of film roles as diverse as a laid-back battlefield surgeon in “M*A*S*H,” a ruthless Nazi spy in “Eye of the Needle,” a soulful father in “Ordinary People” and a strutting fascist in “1900,” died on Thursday in Miami. He was 88.His son Kiefer Sutherland, the actor, announced the death on social media. CAA, the talent agency that represented Mr. Sutherland, said he had died in a hospital after an unspecified “long illness.” He had a home in Miami.With his long face, droopy eyes, protruding ears and wolfish smile, the 6-foot-4 Mr. Sutherland was never anyone’s idea of a movie heartthrob. He often recalled that while growing up in eastern Canada, he once asked his mother if he was good-looking, only to be told, “No, but your face has a lot of character.” He recounted how he was once rejected for a film role by a producer who said: “This part calls for a guy-next-door type. You don’t look like you’ve lived next door to anyone.”Yet across six decades, starting in the early 1960s, he appeared in nearly 200 films and television shows — some years he was in as many as half a dozen movies. “Klute,” “Six Degrees of Separation” and a 1978 remake of “The Invasion of the Body Snatchers” were just a few of his other showcases.And he continued to work well into his last years, becoming familiar to younger audiences through roles in multiple installments of “The Hunger Games” franchise, alongside Brad Pitt in the space drama “Ad Astra” (2019) and as the title character in the Stephen King-inspired horror film “Mr. Harrigan’s Phone” (2022).Mr. Sutherland’s chameleonlike ability to be endearing in one role, menacing in another and just plain odd in yet a third appealed to directors, among them Federico Fellini, Robert Altman, Bernardo Bertolucci and Oliver Stone.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 100 Shares149 Views

      in Music

      ‘Punjabi Wave’ Music Hits the Juno Awards Stage

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      Karan Aujla, 27, became the first Punjabi artist to win an award at the Junos as the genre expands its fan base in Canada.Karan Aujla accepting the Fan’s Choice Award at the Juno Awards on Sunday in Halifax, Nova Scotia.Darren Calabrese/The Canadian Press, via Associated PressFor many watching the Juno Awards on Sunday, the first few lines of Karan Aujla’s upbeat love ballad were probably their first introduction to Punjabi music.But Mr. Aujla’s energetic performance at the show in Halifax, a marquee event in the Canadian music industry, inspired even the timid sections of the crowd — for whom the sound and lyrics were something entirely new — to boisterous enthusiasm, said Baldeep Randhawa, a talent buyer and promoter at the entertainment company Live Nation.“He won everybody over by the end,” Mr. Randhawa, who was in the Juno audience, told me. “The cheers after his set were one of the loudest of the night.”Mr. Aujla, 27, immigrated to Canada 10 years ago to live with his sisters after his parents had died, and he worked odd jobs before committing to a career in music. His music has bubbled to the top of what some industry watchers are calling the “Punjabi wave,” a cohort of artists who are blending South Asian sounds with influences from rap and hip-hop, and collaborating with Western stars to reach new audiences.On Sunday, he became the first Punjabi artist to win at the Junos, taking home the Fan Choice Award.[Video: Karan Aujla performs at the Juno Awards with Ikky, a 23-year-old Punjabi music producer from Toronto.]We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 125 Shares139 Views

      in Music

      Eleanor Collins, Canada’s ‘First Lady of Jazz,’ Dies at 104

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      A singer known for her mastery of standards, she found stardom in Canada on TV and in nightclubs. But she was virtually unknown in the United States.When the singer and pianist Nat King Cole’s 15-minute variety show debuted on NBC in November 1956, he made history as the first Black American to host a television program. But just over the country’s northern border, another Black entertainer had him beat: In the summer of 1955, Eleanor Collins had her own show on the CBC, Canada’s national broadcasting network.Though her show was a landmark in TV history — she was both the first woman and the first Black person to host a program in Canada — her selection was hardly a surprise.By the mid-1950s, Mrs. Collins was already widely regarded as Canada’s “first lady of jazz,” known for her mastery of the standards and her commanding performances on radio, early TV specials and in nightclubs around Vancouver, where she lived.“As a young man in the 1950s, having just started my radio career, I was mesmerized by Eleanor Collins,” the Canadian broadcaster Red Robinson wrote in The Vancouver Sun in 2006. “To me, she was Lena Horne and Sarah Vaughan all rolled into one. She had electric eyes and a voice to melt the hardest heart. I was in love with her.”Mrs. Collins was at home in the intimate environs of the jazz club. She had a knack for reading the room — she could easily be the center of attention, but if audience members were more interested in one another than in her, she was equally adept at providing background music.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 163 Shares159 Views

      in Movies

      Norman Jewison, Director of ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ and ‘Moonstruck,’ Dies at 97

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      His movies — from dramas to comedies and musicals — became magnets for Oscars, but he was best known for socially conscious films, like “In the Heat of the Night.”Norman Jewison, whose broad range as a filmmaker was reflected in the three movies that earned him Academy Award nominations for best director — the socially conscious drama “In the Heat of the Night,” the big-budget musical “Fiddler on the Roof” and the romantic comedy “Moonstruck” — died on Saturday at his home. He was 97.His death was confirmed by a spokesman for the family, Jeff Sanderson. He declined to specify where Mr. Jewison lived, saying that the family requested privacy.Mr. Jewison, whose career began in Canadian television and spanned more than 50 years, was, like his close friend Sidney Lumet and a select few other directors, best known for making films that addressed social issues. The most celebrated of those was “In the Heat of the Night” (1967), one of his earliest features and his first Oscar-winning film.A story of racial tensions in the American South filtered through a murder mystery that brings together a Black Philadelphia detective (Sidney Poitier) and a white Mississippi police chief (Rod Steiger), “In the Heat of the Night” could not have been more timely: It opened weeks after racial violence had erupted in Detroit and Newark. It went on to win five Academy Awards, including best picture and best actor, for Mr. Steiger.Mr. Poitier was among the many actors who had fond memories of working with Mr. Jewison. “He gives his actors room and keeps them as calm as he can, because it’s easier to speak with them when they’re calm,” he told The New York Times in 2011. “A director has to keep the actors on their toes while the camera’s running, but when the scene is done, they should be relaxing, nothing on their minds. There can’t be a constant level of seriousness. And with Norman, there’s always a lot of laughter.”Mr. Jewison lost the best director award for “In the Heat of the Night” to Mike Nichols, who won for “The Graduate,” and he never did win an Oscar for directing. But his films, and the actors in them, garnered many Oscars and 46 nominations.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      in Music

      Myles Goodwyn, Singer-Songwriter of April Wine, Dies at 75

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      Mr. Goodwyn sang and played guitar for April Wine, an arena rock band in the Canadian Music Hall of Fame.Myles Goodwyn, a singer, songwriter and guitarist for the Canadian classic rock group April Wine, died in Halifax, Nova Scotia, on Sunday. He was 75.His death was announced on social media by Eric Alper, his publicist, who did not provide a cause.Mr. Goodwyn was “suffering from a lot of health issues,” said Mr. Alder, who did not provide further details. Mr. Goodwyn had been public about his struggle with diabetes. In 2008, he was hospitalized after he collapsed en route to a Quebec airport on his way to play a sold-out show.Mr. Goodwyn announced in December 2022 that he was retiring from touring with April Wine. He performed his last show in Truro, Nova Scotia, in March.April Wine, arena rockers known for their power ballads, sold over 10 million records worldwide and in 2010 were inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame. In September, the band was given a spot on the Canadian Walk of Fame, and Mr. Goodwyn was named to the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame.April Wine formed in late 1969 in Waverley, Nova Scotia, with Mr. Goodwyn, the brothers David Henman on guitar and Ritchie Henman on drums, and Jimmy Henman, their cousin, on bass. Not long after forming they moved to Montreal.“Fast Train” was the band’s first hit, from its self-titled debut album in 1971. Success in the United States took longer: In 1978, it scored its first American Top 40 hit, “Roller.” In 1981, the album “The Nature of the Beast” went platinum and gave the band its biggest U.S. hit, “Just Between You and Me.”The band attracted attention in 1977 when it was performing at the El Mocambo Club in Toronto. Before the show, April Wine was asked to pose as the headliner for a charity event with a group called the Cockroaches as the opening act, but the Cockroaches turned out to be the Rolling Stones.In 2016, Mr. Goodwyn released a memoir, “Just Between You and Me,” which became a best seller in Canada. “Elvis and Tiger,” his novel, was published in 2018.Mr. Goodwyn was born in Woodstock, New Brunswick, on June 23, 1948. He is survived by his wife, Kim Goodwyn, and their two children, as well as another child from a previous marriage. More