Writer, Editor, Blogger

From her home in Burlington, Vermont, Lindsay writes arts, design and travel articles for publications including Dwell magazine, Forbes.com, the Washington Post, the Philadelphia Inquirer, Art New England, Seven Days and the U.K.-based Polo Times.

Lindsay also provides corporate-blogging content, is a proofreader for an advertising agency and provides copywriting services.

freelance journalist

copywriter

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'Tulpan': Coming of Age on the Steppes

Posted Fri, 05/22/2009 - 20:28 by lindsay

    Numerous minor tornadoes whirl across the steppe in director Sergei Dvortsevoy's Kahzak-language film “Tulpan,” but no one seems to care. The wind, the tornadoes and the general squalor of life for a rural nomadic sheepherder in Kazakhstan is completely taken for granted, buried in the daily routine of eking out a living.    The average viewer, on the other hand, is more likely to be taken aback, but Mr. Dvortsevoy's film casually refuses to accept or even acknowledge its foreignness, which gives “Tulpan” a warm, natural feel that colors the mundane, sometimes disturbing reality on the steppe. It's unlikely that many viewers would enter into “Tulpan” with a rosy-hued vision of Kazakhstan, but the film gives us all of the unpleasant realities of nomadic life — constant blowing sand, filthy clothes, rotted teeth and cantankerous animals — while also giving us rare glimpses of the triumphs too, like the dramatic on-screen birth of a lamb that represents the film's highest dramatic peak.

The Best Worst Play Ever: Walnut Street Theatre's 'The Producers'

Posted Fri, 05/22/2009 - 01:00 by lindsay

Cheeky, bawdy and utterly offensive in so many ways, Walnut Street Theatre’s The Producers gets top marks for being guaranteed to offend all ages, races, religions, sexes and beliefs. In fact, the show is all-inclusive in its discrimination — everyone gets his or her full dose, which is exactly how writers Mel Brooks and Thomas Meehan pull it off.
    The show is in great hands at the Walnut, where it can stretch to the epic proportions necessary to be utterly ridiculous in its numerous slurs. Ben Lipitz plays the spurious Broadway producer Max Bialystock, inflating the role with the great comic timing he last employed as Pumbaa in a national tour of The Lion King. Next to Max’s ill-placed bravado — despite his string of Broadway flops — Ben Dibble’s Leo Bloom is a twitchy, nervous mouse of an accountant, hired to keep Max’s books. When Leo discovers that theoretically, a producer could make serious money by raising funds from too many investors and then opening a bad Broadway show, Max swindles his clean-as-a-whistle accountant into cooking the books and being his partner as a producer. Just one caveat: The show has to fail, and miserably so, in order for the men to make any profit. If it succeeds, they both go to jail.

Sharing One Lonely Dublin Christmas

Posted Thu, 05/21/2009 - 20:11 by lindsay

    No more than two minutes pass without some reference to, or abuse of, alcohol in Conor McPherson's The Seafarer. The drink drives the action, the characters and even the unseen future in this darkly sinister play set in Ireland — which, with the fickleness of liquor, exposes both truth and lies in the path of its mayhem, leaving its audience reeling in the wake.
    Set in an unkempt bachelor pad in North Dublin, The Seafarer plays out in the uncertain realm of alcohol-influenced perception, where paranoia and boastful ego go hand in hand, and where the only certain condition is one of enforced solitude, even with several drinking partners inhabiting the same room. The Arden Theatre’s production walks a fine line in attempting to extract the deeply buried insecurities of these men, sometimes succeeding in bringing the subtle twists of each character to the surface, and sometimes obliterating the intended nuances in an alcoholic haze.

She's Got A Way About Her... 'Movin' Out' At The Academy

Posted Mon, 05/18/2009 - 01:00 by lindsay

    Half musical, half  ballet, Movin’ Out only loosely follows a plot, includes only a few lines of dialog and hardly even gives us our characters’ names. Yet it was catapulted forward without missing a beat during a limited run at the Academy of Music last week.
    Renowned choreographer Twyla Tharp is one of the few artists I’ve seen give an edge to Frank Sinatra’s work, displayed during Pennsylvania Ballet’s “Nine Sinatra Songs”  in February. If she could make Ol’ Blue Eyes bite, then the music of Billy Joel — much of it already full of poetically raw material, often hidden under the deceptively lyrical nature of his songwriting — must have seemed an easy feat in comparison.

Bold, Emotive Patterns In PA Ballet's Argentine Program

Posted Mon, 05/11/2009 - 01:00 by lindsay

    The Pennsylvania Ballet’s performance of “Tango with Style” this past weekend left me with a single entreaty: Give this company the freedom to work in the bold choreographic style of artists such as Matthew Neenan more frequently. 
   This is the same company that faithfully and cheerfully presents Balanchine’s Nutcracker year after year — and does it extremely well — but the troupe absolutely glows when painted in the vibrant, provocative colors of nontraditional choreography, as proved by this most recent program at the Merriam Theater.

Tangible Problems, Intangible Solutions at the Arden

Posted Fri, 04/17/2009 - 01:00 by lindsay

   From watching countless episodes of “Tom and Jerry” and the “Bugs Bunny” shorts, one thing is certain: Cartoon characters can’t die. No matter how many times Wile E. Coyote dives off the edge of a cliff, or how frequently Tom squashes Jerry, the resilient little critters just seem to spring back to life again without any harm done.
   The same miraculous quality of the undead applies to the animated character Petey Pup, the star creation of brilliant artist Tony Wiston. But in Tony’s case, it is the franchise of Petey Pup that is even more important than the character — meaning that Petey’s fans simply won’t let him either die, or be written out of the next script.
   Bruce Graham’s Something Intangible, receiving its world premiere at the Arden Theatre, cleverly juxtaposes the inverse relationship between Tony’s Petey-driven fame, and his frustration that he feels artistically confined to the silly antics of a cartoon pup.

'Sin Nombre': Finding Violence On The Tracks To Freedom

Posted Fri, 04/10/2009 - 22:04 by lindsay

    It’s hard to believe that “Sin Nombre” is director Cary Fukunaga’s first feature, as he has created a haunting, serious film about immigration that is both beautifully shot and frighteningly accurate.
    “Sin Nombre” — as much about escaping one’s identity as it is about escaping one’s country — needs a fresh-faced young director to take on its strong themes, burdened as they are with real-time discussions about immigration. Mr. Fukunaga’s take far surpasses this year’s earlier disaster of an immigration movie, “Crossing Over,” starring Harrison Ford.
    And that’s probably where Mr. Fukunaga made his first smart move: casting relatively unknown Hispanic actors and filming completely in Spanish. The story is so real we can taste it, along with the dust and grime that rolls off the tracks of the train traveling through Mexico to “El Norte” — the United States — with hundreds of immigrants clinging to its back. 

'Painted Metaphors': Remnants From The Ancient Mayas

Posted Fri, 04/10/2009 - 20:04 by lindsay

   Curating an exhibit of ancient Maya artifacts is somewhat akin to participating in an international high-stakes scavenger hunt: One is constantly in competition with looters, and the prize might be fragmented, damaged, or even completely nonexistent.
   But one thing remains constant: The prize is always worth the chase, even when it’s shattered into a million pieces.
Or so explorers and curators and the University of Pennsylvania have believed for many years, currently evidenced by a new exhibit on display at the UPenn Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, titled “Painted Metaphors: Pottery and Politics of the Ancient Maya.” The exhibit will remain at the museum through Jan. 31, when it will embark on a multi-city national tour. 

Evil Spies, Witty Cars In 'Chitty'

Posted Thu, 04/09/2009 - 01:00 by lindsay

Originally penned by Ian Fleming, the creator of Bond, James Bond, it’s no wonder that the best part of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is its foreign spies.
One tall and thin (Dirk Lumbard), one short and round (Scott Cote), these two Eastern European undercover men from the made-up country of “Vulgaria” keep Chitty Chitty Bang Bang from descending into the too-precious conceit of precocious children and flying cars with adult cracks and humorous capers. Read more.

Polo Times

Posted Thu, 04/09/2009 - 01:00 by lindsay

I am a regular contributor to the U.K.-based magazine Polo Times. My work for Polo Times has taken me to polo tournaments across Australia and in the U.S. for game reviews, player profiles, photography and polo-related features. Upcoming assignments include traveling to Wellington, Fla. at the end of April to cover the U.S. Open polo tournament — one of the most prestigious tournaments on the U.S. circuit — and an assignment to travel to Wyoming to file a polo-related travel article during August '09.