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Event
Sweater Curse: A Yarn About Love
The first of a series of 5 professional one-woman shows produced by Flower and Bone Productions as a special series at Henderson County Performing Arts Center's Black Box Theatre for the 2014-2015 season. A portion of all box office proceeds will be returned to HCPAC. May purchase tickets for individual shows or a season ticket for all 5. Season tickets are $75 for one and $70 for each additional season ticket ordered at the same time.
With five-star reviews from critics in the US and UK, Texas playwright-performer Elaine Liner brings her hit comedy Sweater Curse: A Yarn about Love to the Henderson County Performing Arts Center in Athens, October 3-5, 2014.
The 70-minute one-act play was a success in its world premiere at the renowned Edinburgh Fringe in 2013, with a return performance at that festival in Scotland in 2014. Liner also has performed the show at the MCL Grand Theatre in Lewisville, Texas, the Performing Arts Center in Port Aransas and the historic Granbury Opera House. It was the most-attended show at the first-ever Dallas Solo Festival at the Margo Jones Theatre in May 2014.
Critics and audiences have warmed to the fuzzy, funny play, which uses knitting as a metaphor for unraveled romances and life's knottiest problems. Liner invites knitters to bring their projects and keep stitching during performances.
The show explains the old wives' tale that says any sweater knitted for a lover will be "cursed" and he'll leave before the project is finished. "I have a lot of lumpy wads of unfinished knitting. All symbols of lumpy, finished relationships," says Liner.
There are detours into great literature's famous knitters, including Penelope and her shroud in The Odyssey, Madame DeFarge and her busy needles in A Tale of Two Cities, and the many references to knitting in Shakespeare. Liner also tosses in real-life news items about knitters, including a "scandal" about a knitting club in Northumberland, England. She also shows off a growing collection of ugly acrylic sweaters, evidence of a civilization that no longer appreciates good wool.
Playing to enthusiastic knit-friendly crowds -- as well as to theater goers who know nothing about knitting but who like a good yarn -- Liner's play received five-star reviews from the tough Fringe critics.
Dallas Morning News theater critic Nancy Churnin wrote, "You don't have to be a knitter to fall under the spell" of Sweater Curse.
TheaterJones critic Amy Martin says, "In this well-written and intricately stitched monologue, references from current pop culture to classic movies are woven with an impressive array of tidbits from classical literature and ancient myths. Sort of a well-educated, deeper and kinder version of Kathy Griffin."
After three decades as a journalist, Elaine Liner, 60, found the dwindling print media biz left more time for making sweaters and playwriting. "I've always knitted to relax between deadlines," she says. "Also I knit so that I do not kill."
Liner was born in Dallas and still lives in her old neighborhood near White Rock Lake. She writes theater criticism and cover stories for Dallas Observer and is co-founder of TheaterJones.com. Her 35-year career writing for daily newspapers and national magazines began when journalism was done on a typewriter. She earned her degree in theater from Trinity University, studying with legendary theater-maker Paul Baker; and has a master's in liberal arts from SMU. She taught writing at SMU and Ohio State University, and in the post-grad "active in learning" program at Collin College.
Follow Elaine Liner on Facebook.com/TheSweaterPlay, Tumblr.com/sweatercurse or on Twitter at @TheSweaterPlay.
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LocationHenderson County Performing Arts Center
400 Gibson Road
Athens, TX 75751
United States
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