Latest news with #Kehler
Winnipeg Free Press
21-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Winnipeg Free Press
Heart-stopping drama
It took a near-death experience for one local theatre artist to understand her father's remarkable capacity to persist. Menno Kehler seemed invincible, as evidenced by the title of his daughter Leigh-Anne's latest production at the Winnipeg Fringe Theatre Festival. 'You know what the first line is? 'My father's heart exploded in the surgeon's hands,'' the playwright- performer says. MIKE DEAL / FREE PRESS Leigh-Anne Kehler's latest show is a deeply personal story about medical scares and close conversations with death. That's only one harrowing medical episode recounted by Kehler in The Man Who Couldn't Die, a solo performance that marks the Neubergthal-raised artist's first original fringe play since 2015. A veteran of 17 festivals whose previous shows include the well-received Fire Women, Die Shakespeare Die and the FemMennonite series, Kehler says the story of her father's artful, stubborn evasion of death, which foretold her own medical challenges, simply wouldn't leave her alone. The new performance, which runs to July 27 at Venue 9 (Planetarium Auditorium), originated in 2013, when the artistic director of a storytelling festival in Toronto asked Kehler if she had anything she could perform in hospitals centred on the topic of death, dying and the emerging concept of MAID (medical assistance in dying). The result was a show, performed with and for medical practitioners, called The Final Hour. An invitation to perform at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa soon followed, as did a personal experience that added new layers to what already felt like a finished story inspired by her father's time in palliative care. 'I had the first symptoms of what would eventually (be diagnosed) as my father's illness,' she says about a rare brainstem disorder that can lead to bouts of acute head pain, seizures and even paralysis. Doubled vision, dizziness and general unsteadiness gave way to such severe pain that Kehler nearly cancelled her Ottawa show. MIKE DEAL / FREE PRESS Winnipeg storyteller and playwright Leigh-Anne Kehler returnst to the Fringe Festival with The Man Who Couldn't Die, which blends bittersweet comedy with painful observations on loss and memory. 'After that performance, one of the matriarchs of our storytelling community told me the show was beautiful to watch and listen to, but that something was missing, and that she knew I was going to find it, and the thing that was missing was that I had to go through years and years of pain and struggle,' Kehler says. 'I won't get into it much right now, but I died and I chose to fight my way back to this body.' The Man Who Couldn't Die is for Kehler 'a culmination of 12 years of lived experience.' 'It's the story that won't leave me alone because I live it every day, but I also want to share it very deeply.' Weekly A weekly look at what's happening in Winnipeg's arts and entertainment scene. Despite the heaviness of the stories recounted, Kehler says the show is flecked with humour and warm memories of her upbringing, drinking cherry Coke through a licorice straw and listening to her father's inappropriate jokes and epic stories as recounted to a captive audience of rural Manitoban coffeeshop hoppers. 'My dad was usually the MC, always a storyteller. At an event celebrating the centennial of our village, he told a very funny story about his teacher at the one-bedroom schoolhouse and he didn't know she was in the audience, in her 90s. After he was done, she slowly made her way up to the stage with a stick in her hand and said, 'Menno, I should have done this to you years ago,' and she whacked his butt,' Kehler says. MIKE DEAL / FREE PRESS Leigh-Anne Kehler's latest show is a deeply personal story about medical scares and close conversations with death. 'My dad just went for it. He was such a great comedian.' The Winnipeg Fringe Theatre Festival runs to Sunday. Tickets and information available at If you value coverage of Manitoba's arts scene, help us do more. Your contribution of $10, $25 or more will allow the Free Press to deepen our reporting on theatre, dance, music and galleries while also ensuring the broadest possible audience can access our arts journalism. BECOME AN ARTS JOURNALISM SUPPORTER Click here to learn more about the project. Ben WaldmanReporter Ben Waldman is a National Newspaper Award-nominated reporter on the Arts & Life desk at the Free Press. Born and raised in Winnipeg, Ben completed three internships with the Free Press while earning his degree at Ryerson University's (now Toronto Metropolitan University's) School of Journalism before joining the newsroom full-time in 2019. Read more about Ben. Every piece of reporting Ben produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press's tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. 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Winnipeg Free Press
20-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Winnipeg Free Press
Fringe reviews #14: The actors identify you as the playwright after the show
THE MAN WHO COULDN'T DIE Saucy Gal Productions Planetarium (Venue 9), to Sunday ⭐⭐⭐ ½ Just like us, and just like her father, Leigh-Anne Kehler was born into an imperfect body, but the Winnipeg storyteller uses every page of this 45-minute medical history to heal the fractures of repetitive trauma. What begins as a play-by-play of her dad's ongoing tug-of-war with the afterlife becomes the performer's meditation on her own impermanence. Well-layered and engaging, Kehler's story is told with considerable empathy and a refreshing paucity of shame, shading in the contours of invisible disabilities to encourage understanding. Affected for over a decade by a rare brainstem disorder that flares up in unpredictable and debilitating fashion, Kehler reflects on her own perseverance while examining religion, science and the inconsiderate fate of epigenetics. — Ben Waldman BUGJUICE: A BEETLEJUICE PARODY Meraki Theatre CCFM — Antoine Garborieau Hall (Venue 19) to Sunday ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Performed by three rotating 12-member teenage casts, this 50-minute musical was created by co-directors Taylor Gregory and Kennedy Huckerby as a vehicle for students of Winnipeg's Meraki Theatre school. Inspired by both the 1988 movie and 2019 Broadway musical ('minus the adult jokes' stresses Huckerby), the show is lively and zany, with fun local references such as Ms. Fringe (Madelin Somers), a ghost who sings sadly about missing her times onstage at the Winnipeg fringe while alive. The song was written by Meraki's student music director Micah Buenafe. July 18 performer kudos go to Calum Goetzke, 15, who channelled Michael Keaton's craziness as Beetlejuice/Bugjuice so well it was spooky. There are typical student productions issues: some players are far stronger than others, and some are running out of voice by the end. The show is further hampered by a venue and stage that's simply too small for the production, with poor sightlines owing to the seating style. But none of that should scare you away. – Janice Sawka CLIQYOU Here's Hoping Theatre Co. MTYP — Mainstage (Venue 21), to Sunday ⭐⭐⭐ ½ Tension … and anticipation … are currently typing in local playwright Maia Woods' CliqYou, a paean to the supportive, anxiety-inducing and frequently antagonistic universe of the long-distance groupchat. After bonding two years earlier via an online role-playing game, seven perfectly likable friends (Katie Welham, Lainey Grueneklee, Reynaldo Gomez, Mike Swain, Sid Fiola, Brandon Case and Woods) who've never met in person approach a tipping point, questioning what — aside from routine, guilt, GIFs and would-you-rathers — is holding them together. Directed by Anika Binding, CliqYou is a cautionary tale of FOMO, selective friendship and the fraught nature of digital togetherness. 'Is it self-reflection time?' one character asks. Isn't it always when the GC is ready to read you for filth and keep your ego in check? — Ben Waldman GENDER PLAY, OR WHAT YOU WILL Will Wilhelm and Brandon Bowers Tom Hendry Warehouse (Venue 6), to Sunday ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ The runtime is accurate, but don't think of this show as 105 minutes long. It's about 35 minutes short, in this reviewer's opinion. You could listen to the marvellous Chicagoan Will Wilhelm recite the Bard for days. The premise: Shakespeare messed with the roles and labels and allowed his era and ours to see past the duty and the doldrums and walls and barriers and chains that were so much a part of Elizabethan times and our own. So we are all invited to explore gender in real time, including the lucky patron who gets to spend time on stage with this blazing, joyful soul. So much of the best work this year has been from queer artists reclaiming ancestors from dominant and false histories that hide their full personhood and glory. No mic, no great panoply. A trained voice, a dagger-sharp wit, the vulnerability of Hamlet, the reformed wisdom of young Henry, Lady Macbeth and of course, Romeo and Juliet. For the cost of a cocktail, you can open a trunk full of treats: full of gasps, tears, guffaws, all revealed in an atmosphere of lightness and love. Unmissable! — Lara Rae THE GET LAID* SHOW (*OR A DATE? DEFINITELY A HIGH FIVE.) TheOtherVNameProductions Duke of Kent Legion (Venue 13), to Sunday ⭐⭐⭐ Veronica Ternopolski wants people to connect. She wants people to have interesting conversations. She wants people to date. She wants people to get laid. And if she can't, she'll settle for a round of high-fives. The local performer, who goes by V, is an energetic bundle of positivity who longs for the good old days of face-to-face communication and wants people to follow the four rules of good relationships: participation, risk, vulnerability and honesty. During the 60-minute interactive show, she invites audience members to follow those guidelines while offloading their emotional baggage, talking about their worst rejections and disclosing a series of personal beliefs via a show of hands. She opens up about her past using numbered eggs to recall good and bad long- and short-term relationships. V takes a poll of available singles, so there is a chance of meeting someone new. But if not, audience members are guaranteed at least one high five. With consent, of course. — Rob Williams IMPROVISION: ANTI PASTA ImproVision Duke of Kent Legion (Venue 13), to Sunday ⭐⭐⭐⭐ ImproVision's Alan MacKenzie and George McRobb are local short-form improv veterans who can always be counted on by comedy fans looking to fill their laughs-per-minute quota, and this year's offering is no exception, judging by Saturday's fast-paced 50-minute set. The duo plays a variety of improv games and uses suggestions from the audience to incorporate into scenes. The pair knows how to wrap segments up quickly and never let things drag on too long, whether they are acting out a man's day using puppets, reading an audience member's phone texts to create a new scenario or having the crowd 'direct' a scene by calling for an increase of various emotions, leading to what could be the first instance anywhere of people randomly shouting, 'More ennui!' And, if you somehow aren't having a good time, the legion's bar stays open during the show. — Rob Williams SEANCE SISTERS Wickert & Arbogast Son of Warehouse (Venue 5), to Sunday ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Try these mediums on for size. Spirited into Winnipeg from Minneapolis, the Seance Sisters are Sara Miller, Anya Naylor and Vivian Kampschroer. This trio summons the ghosts of the real-life Fox sisters, who astonished 19th-century audiences by purportedly communicating with the dead during nationwide spiritualist roadshows. Even sceptics stand to be converted into believers in one hour by this trio, whose dictions and physicalities are always precise, calculated and co-ordinated, just as any classic hoax should be. Eerie sound, set and lighting design enable this production to float like a coffee table, giving the Son of Warehouse the feel of an ectoplasmic revival at Winnipeg's historically haunted Hamilton House. – Ben Waldman THIRD PARTY Brighter Dark Theatre MTYP — Mainstage (Venue 21), to Sunday ⭐⭐⭐⭐ ½ Brett and Julie (Alanna McPherson and Dane Bjornson, both terrific), whose two-year-old relationship is already cracking under the pressure of cohabitation, confronts its most stressful episode yet: an intense collision with Marty Fink (Thomas McLeod), an intrusive investigator from Manitoba Public Insurance. In the playwright McLeod's followup to last year's lauded House of Gold, he reunites with director Teresa Thomson for a 45-minute phone call that gives its talented cast every opportunity to get their story straight after a roundabout crash. McLeod's wisest move as a writer is to keep the conversation mostly confined to telephone lines, loading each of Julie and Brett's responses with duplicitous winks of dishonesty and misdirection — of each other, of themselves, and of course, of the fanny-packed Fink, whose commitment to the Crown corporation as he paces through the theatre spills into insanity. 'I go the extra mile,' he says in this new work, which, with a less abrupt ending, could easily find a home on any of the city's major professional stages. — Ben Waldman
Dominion Post
22-05-2025
- Sport
- Dominion Post
University's Brock Kehler aims to cap prep career with one last title at state track and field meet
MORGANTOWN – When you hear the name Brock Kehler, you immediately think of what he accomplished during his high school career as an athlete at University High School on the football field and wrestling mat. Kehler is a multi-time first-team all-state selection in football and has been a crucial leader on the gridiron for the Hawks. On the wrestling mat, Kehler dominated from when he wrestled his first match for the Hawks as a freshman until his last match at the state tournament, which resulted in his fourth state championship in as many years. But Kehler was eager to continue competing once football season ended and wrestling was over this year, his senior year. At the suggestion of some UHS track and field team members and with some openings in his schedule after winter concluded, he decided to try his hand at another sport: throwing. Brock picked up the discus and shot put for the first time this spring and joined the Hawks track and field team, quickly becoming one of the best throwers in the state and a vital part of the UHS team. 'A couple of the guys on the team told me they thought I'd be a good thrower, and I had some downtime,' Kehler said. 'It took some time to get used to and adapt, but I feel like I've gotten the technique down. I'd say I started getting used to it about three weeks into the season.' Brock won the OVAC 5A championship in Shot Put with a personal and OVAC-record throw of 54-7. He also captured the Class AAA Region I title in the event with a throw of 49-03.25. Kehler placed second in the Discus at the regional meet with a throw of 150-00. Kehler's performance at the regional meet earned 18 points towards the UHS boys' overall team title, which could go far for the Hawks in Charleston this weekend at the state meet. 'I'd say I started out liking shot more because it's less form-based,' he said. 'But now that I'm starting to really get the disc technique down, it's growing on me.' Brock said the biggest surprise about throwing was how much focus is needed to maintain proper form and technique. 'It surprised me how much those things go behind everything you do as a thrower,' he laughed. 'I remember the first time I threw the disc, it went about 64 feet, and now I'm throwing it up to 150 feet. That alone shows me how important working on form and technique is for improving your distance.' The Class AAA boys' Shot Put and Discus competitions will be held Saturday morning at Laidley Field in Charleston. Shot Put will begin at 9:00 a.m., with the Discus beginning at 11:00 a.m.
CBC
19-02-2025
- Business
- CBC
Walmart slapped higher prices on one-litre milk cartons than permitted by Manitoba law
Social Sharing Walmart Canada was recently selling one-litre cartons of milk in Manitoba stores for higher prices than provincial law allows. The grocery chain was spotted at several stores and online selling one litre of Beatrice milk for $2.88, despite the province limiting the price to a maximum of $2.03 for 2% milk and $1.97 for 1% milk. Kate Kehler, an advocate for people with low incomes, said Walmart owes its customers an explanation. "It's a large chain. They ought to know the rules," said Kehler, executive director of the Social Planning Council of Winnipeg. "And if they don't, they need to find out how that how that happened." CBC News first noticed the price discrepancy of the kitchen staple late Friday and began asking questions over the weekend. A Walmart spokesperson said the company was looking into the matter, but didn't answer CBC's questions over the course of three days. Price dropped after CBC's inquiries By Monday, the price of those milk cartons was reverted to a normal cost, just below the provincial maximum. It isn't known how long Walmart was overcharging customers for one-litre milk cartons. Kehler said it's incumbent on the company to explain the price hike in order to regain the trust of customers. "If a mistake was made, then a mistake was made and they're going to have to do something to make it up to people." She suggested the company make amends by offering customers a discount. She compared the possible remedy to Loblaws customers getting a $25 gift card as compensation for the bread price-fixing scandal in the early 2000s. "An apology is always the first step," Kehler said. "It's actually what you do to to back up that apology that matters." Manitoba Agriculture Minister Ron Kostyshyn said Tuesday he's instructed his department to examine the price of milk at Walmart. He said he couldn't speak about next steps before understanding what happened. Provincial law dictates anybody who violates the Milk Prices Review Act can be fined between $500 and $5,000. The current restrictions only impact homogenized, 2%, 1% and skim milk that are in a one-litre container. Other types of milk, such as oat or lactose-free, aren't impacted by the price controls. Kehler wants a cap on the price of bigger cartons of milk as well, especially at a time when people are struggling to make ends meet. "Buying a litre of milk at a time is the most expensive way of buying milk," she said. "It would be good if [the province] looked at all of them." Kostyshyn said any potential changes would require discussions with the government and supply management officials, while explaining the current price limit on one litre of milk is a priority for the province. Other stores have also been caught charging more for milk than what is allowed by law. A 2013 investigation from CBC News found some downtown Winnipeg stores overcharging for one-litre cartons of milk, prompting the former NDP government to promise a review of the practice. Kostyshyn, who was also agriculture minister at the time, didn't have an answer Tuesday as to what resulted from the review. Kehler said the Social Planning Council of Winnipeg noticed in 2022 that a 7-Eleven location was charging too much for one-litre milk cartons. It brought the issue to the store's attention and the price was reduced. The set price for milk is usually amended annually in the province. This February, the price in each of the four categories dropped by one cent.
