Sue Higginson, director, introduces the play

"Ladies of the Women’s Institute bare all to raise money in a nude calendar." Even now it is easy to imagine the bemused reactions of radio listeners, newspaper readers and TV audiences up and down the country.

Calendar Girls is based on true events which took place in a rural village in Yorkshire in 1999.  Angela Baker and friends Tricia Stewart, Ros Fawcett, Chris Clancy, Beryl Bamforth, Lynda Logan, Sandra Sayers, Moyra Livesey, Leni Pickles and Lynn Knowles were all members of the Rylstone and District WI. When Angela’s husband, John Baker, died from cancer in July 1998, all the girls rallied round to raise money in John’s memory. Their aim was to raise enough money to replace the sofa in the waiting room at the local hospital. Their idea was to sell an ‘alternative’ WI calendar featuring not the usual bridges and landscapes, but nudes!

In 1999, the common perception of the WI was of genteel and respectable ladies making jam and singing Jerusalem; a nude calendar was a rather unconventional departure! The story was journalistic gold dust! There was a near tidal wave of media attention.

The story was pounced upon by radio and television journalists. Almost instantly the girls were under pressure to sell the rights to their stories.  Three years on, in 2003, true life was resembling something like Hollywood.

At every performance of Calendar Girls Pimms will be on sale from the bar counter in the John Measures Studio. 

Also on sale will be Mavis Dunphy’s prized miniature teddy bears and framed landscape photographs by John Bartlett.

All proceeds will be sent to cancer research, Just as were the proceeds from the famous WI calendar.