Members of Grassington Players headed to the hills for this tribute image to commemorate their exciting forthcoming production of Calendar Girls with local photographer Heidi Marfitt.
324 amateur dramatic societies have been granted licence to perform the record-breaking play in the coming months, with the local society Grassington Players allowed to perform the play one day earlier. The author, Tim Firth, will be among those attending the gala performance, and most importantly, the ‘real’ Calendar Girls, along with national television cameras following the story.
The greatest challenge for this courageous cast, however, is playing characters based on the real people they know personally, on whom the story is based. Harder in some ways even than appearing nude in front of an audience, knowing the ‘real’ women means the production has taken on a much greater significance for them. Grassington Players are determined that their interpretation of the bitter-sweet tale should be a tribute to their friends, the original girls whose tireless work has generated more than £3 million pounds for Leukaemia & Lymphoma Research – as well as sparking an international flurry of nude fundraising calendars for countless other charities.
The lives of the real girls and the cast and team of the Grassington Players production are closely woven. Mark Bamforth, who plays the dying man based on John Baker (whose death in 1999 inspired the original girls to produce the first calendar) is the son of the original Miss January, Beryl Bamforth. Beryl herself has been a member of the Players since the 1970s. Mark’s partner Jane Ellison-Bates, who plays John’s widow, owned the house that Angela Baker (the real Annie or Miss February) now lives in. Miss November (Ros Fawcett) worked in the tearoom owned and run by Zarina Belk who now plays her character, Ruth, in the play. Stage Manager, Mary Wilkinson worked for more than 20 years with John Baker…and so it goes on.
Having seen that many other amateur companies have based their publicity images around the focal point of the piano featured in the play, the girls of Grassington Players wanted to champion what they feel really makes them different; living in John’s dale. John Baker worked for the Yorkshire Dales National Park for and with strains of William Blake’s Jerusalem running through the play, the girls chose a breathtaking local Wharfedale view as their perfect commemorative shot ‘in England’s green and pleasant land’.