Only the Lonely

27 March 2009

I asked theatre designer, Alison Hefferman, what prompted the use of a knitted set? ‘It came very much from the writing. With Lonely being a terrible knitter, I came up with the idea to surround the set with discarded knitting seeing them a knitted islands, reflecting Lonely’s feelings.’ How did the set design develop? Alison storyboarded the play, designing a specific set of props and producing a scale model of the finished set. Head of Wardrobe, Juliette was given the task of developing the design into a fully functioning set.

Theatre uses knitting to ‘ease loneliness’

A new children’s play ‘If only the Lonely were home’ written by Finegan Kruckemeyer, opened last night at the Theatre Royal, York.

Aimed at 4-7 year olds the play follows Penny and Lonely as they discover the meaning of friendship using music, dance and knitting!

Lonely eases his loneliness by knitting – he is not very good but it does make him feel better. The stage set features a variety of knitted objects, highlighting some of Lonely’s previous attempts at knitting.

The knitted islands were made-up from items donated by Friends of York Theatre Royal and the scarf was specially commissioned for the play. Top knitting team of Kate Gardner, Paula Grosvenor and Janet Hull were issued with the details of what was required. Apart from the islands and the scarf there are 2 gossipy crow characters that needed to be brought to life. A quick search on Ebay found a fabulous crochet pattern, producing 2 crows that were a great hit with the first night audience. Serenity Knitting loved these crows and is thinking of producing copies for our shop.

If Only the Lonely was staged by Theatre Company, Tutti Frutti who’s mission is to delight children with meaningful, imaginative, visual, story based theatre. Last night’ performance touched the hearts of both children and the adults in the audience. Serenity Knitting wishes them well in their 3 week run at York Theatre Royal followed by a tour. For more detail visit their website. We also thank them for marvellous timing giving a new website a fabulous knitting story to report on its first day!

We hope to be featuring some work from our new friends in the theatre knitting team on the Inspire page in the future. I can’t wait to see the grass toilet carpet that is being knitted for an unsuspecting boyfriend! Another has volunteered her boyfriend to be featured in our video series ‘ Men chatting AND knitting, multi-tasking gone mad’

< back