Based on the true story of 11 women who posed nude for a calendar to raise money for the Leukemia Research Fund, “Calendar Girls” is playing in The Dressing Room Theatre of Curtain Call Inc. in Stamford through Jan. 24.
The Dressing Room Theatre provides cabaret-style seating and a BYO- everything format.
In the play, when Annie’s husband John dies of leukemia, she and best friend Chris resolve to raise money for a new settee in the local hospital waiting room. They manage to persuade four fellow club members to pose nude with them for an “alternative” calendar, with a little help from hospital porter and amateur photographer Lawrence. The news of the women’s charitable venture spreads like wildfire and hordes of press soon descend on the small village of Knapeley in the Yorkshire Dales.
The fundraising phenomenon of “Calendar Girls” was inspired by the death of Angela Baker’s husband John Richard Baker, an Assistant National Park Officer for the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority, who died from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma at the age of 54 in 1998. During his illness, Angela’s friends began to raise money, initially with the aim of purchasing a settee for the visitors’ lounge in the hospital where John was treated. Nothing could have prepared them for the way their original calendar took off (selling 202,000 copies in the first year). To date they have raised over £3 million for Leukaemia & Lymphoma Research, the U.K.’s leading blood cancer charity.
For more information and tickets, please visit curtaincallinc.com.
