The Yorkshire theatre where the audience throw bananas and doughnuts at actors on stage

The craze started some 12 years ago when the then artistic director Dr Tony Lidington came up with the idea to get the local community involved in the pantomime.

Since then word has spread and the knitted items, this year it’s vegetables, now arrive in their bucket loads from across the globe as well as from the army of local knitters – and now crocheters.

"I am a real believer that theatre should involved the entire community not just watching the action but being involved in it,” says Tony who is an authority on British popular entertainment forms.

He got the idea from something he saw when he was artistic director at the Opera House in Wakefield.

"There was this one production company who would get the audience involved in a rock fight during the performance where they would throw sponge rocks onto the stage. It was a fantastic way to get the audience involved in the collaborative process,” says Tony – also known as Uncle Tacko to theatre-lovers.

"When I moved to Richmond I liked to be experimental with the idea of theatre which you could do in such an intimate space. When it came to the yearly pantomime I really wanted to get the community involved and come up with something that they could actually make.

"Yarn bombing was just becoming a really big thing and we were doing The Adventures of Sinbad and so I thought why not come up with a really simple design and ask people to knit yellow bananas to throw at the monkeys at a particular stage of the pantomime.”

And what started out with a handful of local knitters and theatre volunteers being involved has become a much anticipated global phenomenon.

"People contact us in January when one pantomime has finished to see what we are doing next but it as to be written into the script so we don’t always know,” says Avril Proudlock, a theatre volunteer who has been involved in the knitting initiative since the days of Sinbad.

"We even get people sending in their knitting from Australia – we gets 100s and 100s many with stories attached. It is really nice as it makes the Richmond pantomime unique and definitely encourages people to come.” There is a even a competition to see who can knit the most knit the most items - one year a lady knitted 264 by herself.

"I wasn’t a big knitter but it is fun to be involved and the patterns are really quite easy. It is very interactive and the pantomime audiences love it – it’s what sets up apart from other theatres. It's something a bit different,” says Avril.

Tony admits that encouraging the audience to throw things at actors needs to be carefully stage managed.

"You can’t just have people throwing things at actors at any time,” he says.

"The theatre has to manage it well and be really careful when they hand them out and when they instruct people to throw them at a particular time that has been written into the script. They also need to be collected or else the actors could slip on them. ”

Avril agrees. “It always happens in the second half and people are told the exactly when to throw them.”Other knitted items have been used to decorate the building such as the 2,500 brightly coloured leaves that adorned a three-storey high beanstalk in 2015 and the giant patchwork blanket that covered the audience during Sleeping Beauty in 2018.

Last year, a batch of fish for Pinocchio arrived with a note from a lady in Northallerton writing on behalf of her elderly mother: “Mum is a very active 94-year-old, turning 95 on Christmas Day. Her favourite pastime now is to settle down and do a bit of knitting. I stitched the fish together for her and between us we have ended up with some passable items. It has given her a sense of purpose and she can still feel useful.”

When the show is over, the theatre always tries to find homes for the knitted items and previously they have donated to schools, nurseries, church groups and the RSPB nature reserve at Saltholme, something Tony aoproves of.

This year knitters have been asked to knit all varieties of vegetables for the production of Repunzel which runs from Wednesday December 6 to Sunday January 7, 2024, and they will be thrown by the audience at the actors in honour of pantomime dame – Mrs Spud, the proprietor of a Vegetarian café.

Virtual newcomer to the Georgian Theatre Royal knitters is Natasha Cropper.

"I have done a few bits for the pantomime in the past and my children love to get involved when they are in the audience, but this is the first year I have been approached by the theatre to get involved as part of my job in the crochet community,” Natasha makes bespoke crochet hooks after starting to crochet when she was very young.

"I remember when I was about 11 I saw this crochet hat that I really wanted, but mum said she’d teach me to make it but of course she never did. I was determined to make that hat one day and I started from there. I just fell in love with yarn and crocheting in particular.” And so Natasha has now joined the Richmond knitters and is busy crocheting carrots, tomatoes, mushrooms and her favourite, a radish, all with smiley faces on.

"I tend to do them from home but it would be lovely to get together with other knitters. I’ve met one lady who is in her 80s who knits for the pantomime and I did a few sessions with her and showed her how to crochet. I’d also love to go into the local schols and get the children involved in the knitting,” says Natasha.

And for Tony, who has been a showman for more than 30 years and now lectures in Drama at the Univeristy of Exter among other things, the tradition is much more than just throwing some knitting vegetables at the actors.

"Theatre should push boundaries. When I was at Richmond I didn’t want it to become just a museum which some people think it should be, I wanted it to be a play space, and interactive experience. We had the actors climbing into the audience and involving them in the action. One time we had a drone going into the audience and acrobats.

"This ridiculous idea of a proscenium arch and audiences just watching actor on a stage is only something that has appeared in the last 150 years.I never pretend anything is real. Nothing is natural in the theatre, and the idea of naturalistic theatre is ridiculous.”

Tony’ approach may have ruffled a few feathers of the traditionalists, but the Richmond theatre is still one the best preserved Georgian theatres in the country. Guided Tours of the theatre described as a ‘living museum’ take place every Monday to Saturday until the end of October.

And Avril too sees the value of getting the community involved. "The Georgian Theatre in Richmond relies on its volunteers, with the volunteers and supporters it just wouldn’t be here.”

Anyone who would like to be involved in knitting vegetables can download patterns from www.georgiantheatreroyal.co.uk and hand the finished items in to the Box Office by November 25 or post to: The Georgian Theatre Royal, Victoria Road, Richmond, North Yorkshire, DL10 4DW.