What’s up: Improv, PettyFest, Hawksley Workman, Spooktacular hike, tea with Shakespeare, High Tea with Shakespeare

Outside Joke: Hot Topic

• West End Cultural Centre, 586 Ellice Ave.
• Saturday, 8 p.m.
• Tickets $25-$30 at wecc.ca

A ballad about the Alberta referendum results, maybe? A patter song about the local mayoral race, perhaps?

Outside Joke, Winnipeg’s premier musical improv group, presents Hot Topic, an original, one-night-only improvised musical ripped from the headlines. The crew — Andrea Del Campo, Chadd Henderson, Toby Hughes, RobYn Slade, Jane Testar and musical director Paul De Gurse — will be taking audience suggestions from which to spin their always-entertaining, always-hilarous yarns, so might we suggest perusing the Free Press before you head out?

Doors open at 7 p.m.

— Jen Zoratti

PettyFest

• Times Change(d), 234 Main St.
• Saturday, 3 p.m.-12:45 a.m.
• Tickets $22 at highandlonesomeclub.ca

Classic rock lovers won’t be backing down on Saturday, when Times Change(d) High and Lonesome Club hosts Pettyfest.

The 11th annual celebration of the songs of Tom Petty features a headlining performance by Damn the Torpedoes, Winnipeg’s finest Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers cover band, and an opening set from Two Crows for Comfort doing two shows, one at 7 p.m. and a second starting at 10:30 p.m.

— Sheldon Birnie

Hawksley Workman

• Park Theatre, 698 Osborne St.
• Saturday, 8 p.m.
• Tickets $36 plus fees at Ticketmaster

One of Canada’s most beloved singer-songwriters returns to Winnipeg this weekend for an intimate show featuring a deep dive into his catalogue.

Hawksley Workman’s impressive body of work includes over a dozen recordings, a Juno award and a touring career that has seen the 51-year-old play hundreds of shows across Canada and beyond. Workman has crafted a sound that melds roots, rock and pop with a hint of the melodramatic that has earned him a legion of devoted fans. Among Workman’s body of work are fan favourites such as Jealous of Your Cigarette, Save My Life, Autumn’s Here and Striptease.

On Workman’s current tour he’s setting out from Saskatoon and making his way east, stopping in smaller towns as well as cities that are home to some of his passionate fan base to entertain fans with a solo show peppered with songs new and old, from deep cuts to classics.

Workman will be joined at the Winnipeg show by Yukon’s Hendrika, who will play solo. After the Winnipeg show, Workman heads to Gimli’s Ship and Plough for a sold-out Sunday concert. Seated admission for the Winnipeg show is sold out, but standing tickets remain.

— Ben Sigurdson

Spooktacular Halloween Hike

• Chickadee Trail, Birds Hill Provincial Park
• Saturday, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.
• Free

Some people are afraid to take a hike. Not Deborah Gay De-Vries, the outreach and public engagement manager for the Manitoban chapter of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society (CPAWS). What scares her most is the thought that those who don’t explore beaten paths will miss out on valuable lessons about conserving our shared world.

“It turns out if you don’t get out in nature, if you don’t appreciate nature and learn to love nature, you’re not going to care about protecting it, which is of course, what we do here,” says the longtime visitor to Birds Hill, who’s noted seeing fewer ground squirrels in the provincial park this past season.

Some city slickers might say that Merrell shoes don’t suit them, or that a bungee-corded knapsack isn’t quite their bag. But along the four-kilometre Chickadee Trail — a stroller-accessible loop that CPAWS ranks at the lower-end difficulty level of two out of five — anyone can call themselves a hiker, says CPAWS environmental education manager Carly Gray.

“I think people have a preconceived idea of wilderness, especially in Manitoba or Canada in general, that it’s a scary place where big animals live, but they’re also places where humans and nature have interwovenly thrived since time immemorial,” says Gray.

Interacting with insects, arachnids, grosbeaks and black-capped chickadees as children has a lifelong impact. “If you are building a relationship with the natural world, you are way more likely to participate in environmental stewardship in some way and to have environmentally responsible behaviours,” Gray says.

You might even see an Anastoechus, Manitoba Museum botany curator Diana Bizecki Robson’s favourite bee-like fly. “I don’t imagine too many people can say they have one of those,” she wrote in a 2010 blog post for the museum.

Saturday’s CPAWS hike will include self-guided discovery, creative programming by Wild Roots Theatre, and activities like a wishing web, where visitors to the Chickadee trail can share their “hopes, aspirations and wishes for nature,” says volunteer Alex Achter.

— Ben Waldman

High Tea with Shakespeare

• Young United Church, 222 Furby St.
• Sunday, 3 p.m.
• Tickets start at $25 from winnipegsingers.com

This collaboration between the Winnipeg Singers and Shakespeare in the Ruins Theatre Company sees the Bard’s words brought to life through song.

Inspired by Shakespeare’s poetry, the afternoon program features works by William Mathias, George Shearing and Laura Hawley performed by theatre director, actor and the artistic director of Shakespeare in the Ruins Rodrigo Beilfuss, actor and educator Lindsay Nance and actor Liam Dutiaume, who will be joined by bassist Nenad Zdjelar.

In keeping with the afternoon tea theme, guests will be served freshly brewed tea along with an assortment of dainties.

— AV Kitching

Halloween Howl

• Children’s Museum, 45 Forks Market Rd.
• First program Friday, 6:30 p.m.
• $20 per person at childrensmuseum.com

You don’t see enough mad scientists anymore. Even in the 1990s, it seems weekend TV in October was lousy with Frankensteins, Frank-N-Furter, Hydes, Moreaus and Doc Browns.

Maybe scientific inventors no longer spook us the way they used to, or maybe our fears have moved on tech bros in our Black Mirror era of AI empires.

In any case, there’s a fun, refreshing vapour of mad science to the Children’s Museum’s family-friendly Halloween Howl program this year, which starts Friday and runs five times between then and Halloween afternoon. (Check the website for full details about dates and times.)

They’re advertising “spook-tacular” STEM activities, courtesy of the University of Winnipeg’s Let’s Talk Science, and sciency stuff like homemade oobleck, a sensory station and a collaborative glow-in-the-dark mural. Halloween need not be educational — there’s all night for trick-or-treating — but why not have our candy and eat it too?

Halloween Howl also features DJ Mama Cutsworth and animal friends from Wildlife Haven Rehabilitation Centre. Costumes are optional, but this might be a good time to dig up that green gunk-splattered lab coat and prop coke bottle glasses for your youngest.

— Conrad Sweatman