Tempt your musical taste buds
MONDAY
The Superfood Chain
Watch this if: You want some thought for your food. Quinoa, coconuts, salmon and, more recently, teff are just a handful of the “superfoods” touted as fuel to help us live longer and better. But the explosion in popularity of these substances is not all benign. Documentary maker Ann Shin visits farmers and fishers in Bolivia, Ethiopia, the Philippines and Haida Gwaii, B.C., where — as multinational companies and other commercial interests seek an increasingly bigger share of superfood profits — the livelihoods of small-time producers are at risk. Following its world TV premiere, the doc will screen at several festivals, including the Planet in Focus Film Festival in Toronto Oct. 25 to 28. (TVO at 10 p.m.) —Debra Yeo
TUESDAY
Roobha at Reelworld
Watch this if: You want to see a very unique screen romance. Director Lenin M. Sivam’s third feature delves deep into the many complexities of desire and identity within a context that’s rarely seen onscreen: Toronto’s Tamil diasporan community. A drama about the romance between a Sri Lankan family man and a transgender woman,
Roobha makes its local premiere this week as the opening-night selection for the Reelworld Film Festival. The annual cinematic showcase of under-represented voices, perspectives and experiences runs until Oct. 14 with a generous program of screenings, including one more for Roobha on Oct. 10 at Famous Players Canada Square. (Glenn Gould Studio, 250 Front St. W., 5:30 p.m.) —Jason Anderson
The Wolves
Watch this if: You want to see nine girls put on their game faces. After the past week, how ready are you to see some strong, complicated and intelligent teenage girls onstage? Sarah DeLappe’s Pulitzer Prize-nominated play, which shook New York City two years ago, zooms in on nine soccer players as they push through adolescence and each other. Making its Toronto debut with the Howland Company and Crow’s Theatre, this production stars actors who already have proven chemistry (Hallie Seline and Ruth Goodwin were impressive in last season’s Punk Rock) and some beloved performers like Rachel Cairns and Heath V. Salazar (known in cabaret and drag scenes as Gay Jesus). Let’s go Wolves! (Streetcar Crowsnest, 345 Carlaw Ave., 8 p.m., on until Oct. 27) —Carly Maga
Cat Power
Watch this because: She brings a combustible combo of intensity and vulnerability to the stage. It’s been a while since Chan Marshall, a.k.a. Cat Power, hit the touring trail. This return comes almost six years to the day from her last time here, at an ill-fitting Kool Haus, and follows a characteristically trying period for her that’s included bankruptcy, a breakup and health problems. With new album Wanderer, she would seem back in good form. She leads off a week of singular female voices with Lisa Stansfield, Liz Phair and Lykke Li also stopping by. (Danforth Music Hall, 147 Danforth Ave., doors 7 p.m.) —Chris Young
THURSDAY
Ain’t Too Proud
Watch this if: You’ve been begging for a Temptations musical. Apologies for getting that song stuck in your head, but this new musical about the formation of the Temptations will do that and more. The jukebox musical (it cycles through about 30 songs) has a Toronto run before it hits Broadway next February, aiming to be the next Jersey
Boys or Beautiful. With former Stratford Festival artistic director Des McAnuff
directing (whose last project was Summer: The Donna Summer Musical), Ain’t Too Proud will not be subtle, but book writer Dominique Morisseau cut her teeth on her Detroit Projects series and just won a MacArthur “Genius” Grant. Maybe we’ll be pleading, “Don’t you go” when the run ends next month. (Princess of Wales Theatre, 300 King St. W., 8 p.m., on until Nov. 17) —CM
Love me out of it
Watch this if: You’re a fan of contemporary dance or ’80s punk, especially if you’re a fan of both. Laurence Lemieux, artistic director of Citadel + Compagnie, opens the 2018/ 2019 season with a solo work created and performed by Lemieux herself, choreographing to an album played straight through for the first time. That album is Frantic City by Teenage Head, a beloved 1980s Hamilton punk band. A live music performance will follow each night from a rotating list of bands, but Teenage Head themselves will play for the Love me out of it audience on Oct. 13. (The Citadel, Ross Centre for Dance, 304 Parliament St., 8 p.m., on until Oct. 20) —CM
I’ll Take Your Dead at Toronto After Dark Watch this if: You want to catch some fine homegrown horror. The tale of a father and daughter with a very gruesome family business, the latest by the city’s most industrious horror-movie team, is a highlight among the Canadian fare at Toronto After Dark. The festival of genre cinema launches its 13th annual edition with the first of nine nights of horror, science fiction and action flicks that are all new to local audiences. A tense thriller by director Chad Archibald and Black Fawn Films (whose previous fest faves include Bite and Let Her Out), I’ll Take Your Dead helps kick off the mayhem in a suitably bloody fashion. (Scotiabank Theatre, 259 Richmond St. W., 9:30 p.m., festival on until Oct. 19) —JA
X Avant XIII Watch this for: Four nights of blowing minds. As usual, it’s hard to pick just one highlight from the Music Gallery’s annual festival of the outre, so best to choose a convenient evening that works for your adventuresome mind or taste ’em all, drawn up as a “Halluci Nation” celebration by this year’s curator, Bear Witness of A Tribe Called Red renown. Saturday’s late-night headliner El Dusty (Mod Club, 722 College St., 10 p.m.) brings his likable electro-cumbia up from the Texas panhandle and looks a real doozy. There’s more, including the snap, crackle, pop of abstract turntablist Maria Chavez on Friday and T.O. dub poet Lillian Allen, a legend in her own right, brings down the curtain and doubtless the house Sunday night. (Music Gallery, 918 Bathurst St., on until Sunday) —CY
FRIDAY
Finding the Secret Path Watch this if: You still miss him a year later. Tragically Hip singer Gord Downie died Oct. 17, 2017 of brain cancer and the CBC isn’t done commemorating him. This special, written and directed by his brother, Mike, documents a project that was close to Gord’s heart in the final year of his life: telling Canadians about Chanie Wenjack, the 12-year-old Anishnaabe boy who died while trying to escape a residential school in northern Ontario on Oct. 23, 1966. Besides a Secret Path album, the passion of Gord and his collaborators also produced a graphic novel, an animated feature film and a concert special. We’ll get to see Gord at work in this doc, which also features reflections from the Wenjack family and Canada’s Indigenous leaders. (CBC at 9 p.m., also Oct. 14 at 8 p.m. on CBC News Network, on the CBC TV app and at cbc.ca/watch) —DY