Pippa Mackie and Jay Clift are livin’ la vida del carne in Hunter Gatherers
They’re really different and they’re both really good: Saint Joan at the Stanley and Hunter Gatherers at the Havana. [Read more…]
Archives for October 2014
What to see this weekend: The Rainmaker, and Our Town
October 17, 2014 by Leave a Comment
Pippa Johnstone and Robert Salvador get sweet and sexy in The Rainmaker
The best shows running this weekend are both American classics: The Rainmaker and Our Town.
[Read more…]
The Cultch, your theatre destination this weekend
October 10, 2014 by Leave a Comment
Playing with your Butt (Kapinski) at the Cultch this weekend
This weekend, the Cultch has the two best shows in town: Ronnie Burkett’s The Daisy Theatre and Deanna Fleysher’s Butt Kapinski.
Butt Kapinski is a participatory clown show. Don’t be a wuss. Show up and play. You’ll feel liberated. Fleysher sticks her hand into gender and pulls it inside out, like a sock.
If you’ve seen The Daisy Theatre before, you probably don’t need to catch this year’s iteration; there’s not enough new material to merit it. But, Jesus, when this marionette cabaret works, it really, really works. Just wait for Schnitzel, the clown fairy, and Little Woody Linden, who is a ventriloquist’s dummy controlled by a marionette ventriloquist. Think about it.
Save the English language: learn the difference between “to lie” and “to lay”
October 3, 2014 by Leave a Comment
This handsome man is LYING in bed. He may LAY down his screen. (He may also GET LAID.)
When I’m working as an editor, one of the mistakes I see most often is the misuse of to lie and to lay. I’m a substantive editor in the publishing world and a story editor (same thing) in the movie world. I help writers to build and shape their narratives. Grammar doesn’t really come into it. But this particular grammatical error drives me nuts.
Here’s the difference between the two verbs: to lie doesn’t have a direct object; to lay does. So you lie in bed and you lay your iPad on the bedside table. (iPad is the object.)
Things get confusing in the past tense because lay is the past tense of lie. (Why, dear God?) So you say, “I lay in bed yesterday”. And laid is the past tense of lay. So you say, “Yesterday, I laid my iPad on the table.”
If the past tense is messing with your head and, if you’re interested in using these verbs correctly—which, I understand, you may not be—don’t worry about the past tense. Just remember: in the present tense, to lie has no direct object, but to lay does. You do NOT lay down; you lie down.
Establish the present tense as a beachhead and, once that’s secure, go boldly forth from there.
Watch your Butt
October 1, 2014 by Leave a Comment
Deanna Fleysher does participatory clown film noir at the Culture Lab until October 11
You know how laughter sometimes just keeps spooling out of you, like it’s this great, long silken rope and you can’t believe how much of it there is? Like you just sit there helplessly and shake while it keeps unraveling? Kids laugh like that all the time. And that’s how I was laughing when I saw Butt Kapinski, for my second time, at the Cultch last night. [Read more…]
