Next on our stage: IDEATION FRANKENSTEIN RAPTURE, BLISTER, BURN JAN. 19-FEB. 19 MARCH 23-APRIL 23 MAY 18-JUNE 18 HIGHLIGHTS A companion guide to Calendar Girls by Tim Firth based on the Miramax motion picture by Juliette Towhidi and Tim Firth Nov. 17-Dec. 18, 2016 Deb Anderson, Caitlin Papp and Anne Younan. All Calendar Girls photos by Taylor Sanders. Synopsis When one of their husbands dies of leukemia, two close friends rally a group of women from a small English town to raise funds for a new couch in the waiting room of the local hospital. Their project? A tastefully nude calendar featuring themselves doing ordinary chores! The calendar becomes a worldwide sensation, but the resulting fame puts an unforeseen strain on the women’s friendship. This warm comedy is based on a true story and on the hit 2003 film. Characters Calendar Girls centers on the six women posing, and the people around them, including: women’s-club queen bee Marie (Patricia Tyler), Annie’s husband John (Ken Boswell), Chris’ husband Rod (Spencer Stevenson), and nervous photographer Lawrence (Jeremy Ryan). The six women, ranging in age from 40s to 60s, are all members of the same women’s club in a small English town, a lively mix of personalities. The script offers bright, funny character descriptions; here are some excerpts: At first reluctant to pose, Annie (Deb Anderson) finds the lighter side of laundry day. Chris (Anne Younan): You want Chris at your party. She will talk to people she doesn’t know, find things to say to fill silences and generate laughter. Annie (Deb Anderson): After Chris has put a waiter’s back up in the restaurant, Annie will go in and pour calm. She has enough edge to be interesting, and enough salt not to be too sweet. Cora (Caitlin Papp): A church organist, single mother and the joker in the pack, Cora has a lively past and a deadpan wit. Jessie (RuthE Stein): A teacher and lover of life, Jessie goes on roller coasters and savors her own elixir of life: bravery. Celia (Karen DeHart): More at home in a department store than a church hall, she always feels like she’s drifted in from another world. Drives a Porsche, vacations in the Maldives. Ruth (Mary Lou Torre): Ruth is desperate to keep everyone else happy, but has spine herself. The other women sense there is something better in her than her life is letting out. The story behind the Calendar Girls The character of John in Calendar Girls (played at City Lights by Ken Boswell) is not only the heart of the play but of the true story as well. The real John was diagnosed with leukemia in 1998, when he was an otherwise healthy man in his 50s. The news shocked his wife, Angela, and her friends at the Rylstone Women's Institute, a women's club in Yorkshire, England. Hoping he would recover, Angela and her family gave sunflower plants to their friends in the hopes that he'd be in remission by the time they bloomed. Sadly, John lost his battle after a few months. While John was ill, Angela and her friends had joked about posing for a tasteful nude calendar, partly to raise money for a new hospital waiting-room sofa, and "partly to entertain John," Angela later wrote in a blog post for Bloodwise (formerly Leukaemia & Lymphoma Research). "John said, 'It's a fantastic idea, but you're all talk; you'll never do it.’” Angela and the other women of the WI did do the calendar, including a sunflower on each photo as their emblem. To their surprise, the calendar won global attention and inspired the hit 2003 film, written by Juliette Towhidi and Tim Firth and starring Helen Mirren and Penelope Wilton (Isobel Crawley in Downton Abbey). "We went to places and met people I never thought we would: we met Michael Palin, appeared at the Royal Variety Performance and met Prince Charles, personally delivered calendars to the Queen and Queen Mother—and received personal thank-yous," Angela wrote. Helen Mirren. Photo by Gage Skidmore. Most gratifyingly, the women have used the project proceeds to donate more than £3 million to Bloodwise. "Out of the tragedy of John's death has come something very special," Angela wrote. "Everything we do is born of love for him.” After the film Calendar Girls came the play, courtesy of Tim Firth, who co-wrote the movie but calls the theater his first love. He'd originally heard about the real girls when his mother sent him a newspaper clipping about them; by chance Firth's family had been going on holiday to the girls' village for 40 years. On his website, Firth said the main challenge in adapting the film for the stage was dealing with a story that takes place over a long time, across many places. He decided to focus the play on two locations: the church hall where the women's club meets, and the open meadows of the Yorkshire Dales. "Instead of the women going out to the world, the world came to the women," he said. "The stage show was able to grow over several years before I finally settled on the printed text," Firth added. "Even then I had to withdraw the published text and pay for a reprint because another tour had revealed flaws to me. In a way that's what I love about theater—the ability to hone and refine. There is, however, always the fear that you may eventually whittle your totem pole down to a toothpick.” Tim Firth. Photo by Andy Hollingworth. Fortunately, the play turned out to be more totem pole than toothpick, becoming hugely popular across the U.K. and then staged in numerous more countries. Along the way, Firth has been especially moved by the play's popularity with small amateur theater groups. "What has impressed me most are the reports of women who have never really acted before wanting to get involved. If people put on the play partly in memory of someone, or as a challenge, or as a laugh, or to raise money, I think it's a rare and privileged existence for any play to have," Firth wrote. "I may never write anything again that achieves this." Organist Cora (Caitlin Papp, front) teams up with, from left, Ruth (Mary Lou Torre), Annie (Deb Anderson), and Chris (Anne Younan) for a few photo-shoot tunes. “Calendar Girls” … the musical? Not only has this inspiring story become a film and a play, but it’s now a bona fide musical comedy, titled The Girls. To write the show, playwright Tim Firth teamed up with singer-songwriter Gary Barlow, the lead singer of the British pop group Take That. Fittingly for a story about friendship, Tim and Gary have been pals for 25 years; they grew up in the same village in the north of England. The Girls has been running at theaters in Manchester and Leeds, raising money for the cancer charity Bloodwise. It’s now scheduled to open in London’s West End in January 2017. To learn more about the show and the story, and to hear the song “Dare” from The Girls, go to bloodwise.org.uk/calendargirls. ”What’s a WI?” and answers to other questions In Calendar Girls, you’ll often hear mentions of the WI: the Women’s Institute, an organization of women’s clubs. While the characters may make fun of the stodgier traditions, they’re loyal to their local: the Rylstone Women's Institute in Yorkshire. The WI dates back to 1897 in Canada, where the first chapter trained women in home economics, animal husbandry and other skills for rural life. In addition, “the movement brought women from isolated communities together,” according to the WI website, which has a lengthy history section. In 1915, the WI spread to Britain. Members have been involved in efforts including: preserving food to ease wartime shortages; staging music festivals; and advocating on such issues as child abuse and sustainable development. The WI also founded Denman, a school with courses on “cookery, craft and lifestyle.” In this 1941 photo, members of the Meifod Women’s Institute make jam. Here are some other terms from the script that might puzzle non-British theatergoers: “Jerusalem”: The WI anthem has its roots in a William Blake poem that begins “And did those feet in ancient time / Walk upon England’s mountains green.” The WI website states: “Both words and music are simple and dignified and easy to learn. Incidentally the learning would give pleasure to any WI and would afford an excellent opportunity for a short talk either on Blake’s poetry, or on poems about England.” Maltesers: If you’ve had those chocolate-covered malt balls known as Whoppers, then Maltesers won’t seem strange. Hershey makes Whoppers in the U.S.; Mars makes Maltesers in the U.K., Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Bulrush lanterns: In the play, we hear about the rival WI decorating a hall with these lanterns, which, presumably, are decorated with a pattern of wetland grasses. Mmmm….Maltesers. Westlife: An Irish boy band who inspires one of the characters’ craft projects. Courgette: Brit-speak for “zucchini.” Everything sounds so much better with a French twist, doesn’t it? Tombola: Brit-speak for a drum from which raffle tickets are drawn. Spin and hope to win. Tesco and John Lewis: Two U.K.-based retailers: one a grocery chain, the other a string of upscale department stores.