Calendar Girls was a costume heavy play and for most of us a new experience wearing modern clothes on the stage. None of us like wearing our own clothes as it is difficult to create a character wearing something you would normally wear so we spent many weeks in the local charity shops and also swopping clothes between ourselves.
In Act 1 there were six scenes, only two of which ran in to each other, so there were five changes. In some cases it was a change of season, so a complete costume, sometimes just the passing of a day, adding say a scarf or a jacket, but there was a change. In Act 2 there were four or five changes depending on the character.
The only costumes in the Ladies Dressing Room were those we wore at the beginning of each Act......
...... along with the Nasa Satellite Dish (Marie's monumental hat !!!)
Many changes had to be made in a page (or sometimes less) of dialogue so we had racks in the wings. Stage left was Cora (Jacky Williamson), Chris (Morag Mouat), Ruth (Donna-Marie Leask) and Jessie (Morag Maver). Fiona Smith (Wardrobe) would have all the costumes ready for the next change, working from another rail in the Prop Room.
Stage right was Celia (Mandy Phillips) and Annie (Jennie Atkinson) using a group of hooks. Doreen Gray and Joyce Williamson (when not playing Brenda Hulse) were there for help.
And yes it was that dark !! very difficult to sometimes make sure you had the right shoes on !
Every hanger was labelled so there was no mix up between characters and at the end of each performance we had to make sure everything was back in the right order.
The number of changes was noted on our Facebook page by a lovely follower, who also said "and not a hair our of place" ..... we didn't feel that we necessarily achieved that !!
Also in the wings were all the props as due to the tight costume changes everything had to be close at hand
