Calendar Girls ~ performed by Playhouse Perennial Players group 

Showing at the MAC   (Multi-Cultural Arts Center)

645 W. Main St., Merced

(PG-13) Due to maturity

Calendar Girls first captured attention as the 2003 Miramax motion picture based on true life events. After the death of her best friend's husband from cancer, spirited Yorkshire housewife Chris Harper hatches a scheme to raise money for a memorial to him. Utilizing a tradition from the hidebound Woman's Institute association, Chris encourages Annie and their friends to create a calendar -- with the novel detail of using the middle-aged women of their village as nude models. The idea stuns the husbands and a wary young photographer.

Calendar Girls gives us a look at how easy it can be for women as they get older to become accustomed to the roles and boxes society wants to put them in and how liberating and empowering it can be to break out of those molds.  Each of the women come to the realization that they are more than what society wants them to be and they use the opportunity of making the calendar to give them confidence to accept themselves for who they are and who they want to portray to the world.