Elaine Liner's SWEATER CURSE to Play MCL Grand Black Box Theater, 12/12-15

By: Oct. 14, 2013
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A hit at the 2013 Edinburgh Festival Fringe in Scotland, playwright-performer Elaine Liner's solo comedy Sweater Curse: A Yarn about Love comes to the 150-seat MCL Grand Black Box Theater in Lewisville, December 12-15 (100 N. Charles St., Lewisville, TX, 75057).

Our Productions Theatre Company presents the funny, poignant play that weaves together Liner's obsessions with knitting, great literature (that mentions knitting, like The Odyssey and A Tale of Two Cities), old movies (in which Bette Davis knits) and the knotty problems of romance.

The term "sweater curse" refers to an old wives' tale that says never to knit for one you love; he (or she) will leave before you finish the project. "I remember all the times I've tried to knit for boyfriends and was left with lumpy, unfinished projects and lumpy, finished relationships," says Liner. "There's a knitting term, tink, which is `knit' backwards, that means un-knitting your work to fix mistakes. I've had to tink back my love life a few times."

Liner finished writing her one-act in 2012 with the goal of producing and performing it herself in the 2013 Edinburgh Fringe, the largest arts festival in the world. Directed by San Antonio theater director Tim Hedgepeth, the show opened at the Sweet/Grassmarket Theatre August 1 and played 25 performances to five-star reviews and sold-out houses, which included lots of knitters.

Knitters and crocheters are encouraged to bring their projects and continue adding stitches during the show. There's also a "traveling scarf" for knitters to add rows to that has traveled with Elaine Liner to every performance.

Liner earned her degree in theater from Trinity University, with a master's from Southern Methodist University. She has been a professional writer, specializing in arts and media criticism, since the 1980s. She is the theater critic at Dallas Observer and has written for The New York Times, Village Voice and dozens of other publications. She was the James Thurber Playwright-in-Residence at Ohio State University and a critic fellow at the Eugene O'Neill Critics Institute.

Follow Elaine Liner's Tumblr page (sweatercurse.tumblr.com) or Twitter @TheSweaterPlay for updates on performances and to get free knitting and crocheting patterns.

Our Productions Theatre Co./Theatre FMPAT is a resident company at the new $10 million Lewisville Center for the Creative Arts/Medical Center Grand Theater, producing professional entertainment in an intimate setting.

All tickets for Sweater Curse: A Yarn about Love at MCL Grand are $15. (10 percent discount for groups of 10 or more.) Call972-724-2147 to make reservations and purchase tickets, or go to http://www.ourproductions.org/ and click "Tickets."

Performance times:

7:30 p.m., Thursday, December 12

8 p.m., Friday, December 13

3 p.m. and 8 p.m., Saturday, December 14

3 p.m., Sunday, December 15

Photo by Mark Oristano

 

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