It’s modern day, and Cleo and her adult daughter Sophie receive recently declassified information about Cleo’s grandmother from the Imperial War Museum in London. Turns out, Audette was not just a sweet old lady who knitted socks—she also worked for Churchill’s Special Operations Executive (SOE) as a spy in Occupied France. The debrief of Audette’s espionage activities answers some questions but leaves many more. Cleo and Sophie’s present dovetails with Audette’s past in 1942 as a middle-aged woman and hidden Jew whose male colleague at the SOE is skeptical she’ll make a difference because she’s a woman and an ‘old’ one at that. But she challenges the chauvinism and ageism of the time by using her invisibility to employ knitting—a classically female craft—to pass coded intelligence to the Allies. After learning the secret story of Audette’s unique and brazen Nazi takedown, Cleo and Sophie—a new mother herself—grapple with the sudden discovery they’re Jewish, especially when Antisemitism is on the rise, and spreading disinformation about the Holocaust has become commonplace. Will they hide their identity as Audette did, or will they embrace it, and all that it means?

Like The Imitation Game, Bletchley Circle or Operation Mincemeat meets knitting, Spycraft is a cool twist to the classic espionage story by adding the narrative of how knitting was used by female spies to code intelligence. Knitting is a commonplace, seemingly inconsequential hobby usually attributed to women, especially older women—who are also frequently rendered invisible and considered inconsequential. So there is power in defying expectations by using this invisibility to change the course of history.

From Kirk and Claire Dunn, the creators of the acclaimed show The Knitting Pilgrim that has toured 120 times in 6 countries, and directed by Canadian theatre veteran Richard Greenblatt, comes a new piece of theatre that also explores the world of knitting in a new way.

Spycraft tours across Ontario Oct 30-Nov 30, 2025.