![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() “Radium Girls” is stunningly staged with an ironic, often-stylized physical approach by astute director James Peck, who has solidly multicast the majority of his acting ensemble in both leading and featured roles that all interact seamlessly with each other throughout the performance, sustaining the emotional flow of the challenging material with impressive, unbroken ease. (Sound unfortunately, currently familiar?) The play also exposes how their actions affected the “people in charge,” as well as the general public, once what was happening became an increasingly hot topic for newspapers all over the country. And so their fight against being forced to work in potentially deadly conditions caused by radium –and how they stubbornly continued (as long as they could) to make changes on every factory floor - is the story shared in the play. So, why should they care about “losing a few workers,” especially if they bought any of the “surviving,” ill workers off with an amount that didn’t even add up to a year’s wages?īut, two of these women (Grace and Kathryn) decided to fight for their rights (the basis for what became workers comp protection). And, of course, making them lots of money. However, the company who owned the factory didn’t want to take responsibility, or stop using the radium, because it was the “key ingredient” that was “lighting up” their dials. However, even though a number of these workers started getting sick - first, with their gums starting to bleed and then with their jaw bones literally dissolving - it took the death of one of the girls to convince at least two of them that they were being poisoned by the radium in their brushes. This thinking ultimately proved to be, quite literally, dead wrong, especially for the women painting the “luminous” dials at the factory, who constantly put their paint brushes in their mouths to “moisten them” between strokes. Gregory’s shattering docudrama, “Radium Girls,” the Department of Dance, Music and Theatre (and the Associated Students) makes a bold artistic statement that has the power to both shock and engage everyone who sees it.īrilliantly staged and performed in the Van Duzer Theatre, the content is based on the tragic, true (often basically forgotten) story concerning the deadly results of radium poisoning unwittingly suffered by young women who worked in a dial factory in Orange, New Jersey in the 1920s.Īt a time when “The Wonders of Radium” (discovered in 1898 by Marie and Pierre Curie) were “The Talk of the Civilized World” as being a cure for diseases like cancer, but also a boon to an individual’s health when it was included in “special” drinks. By opening its 2023 season of productions at Cal Poly Humboldt with an intense play like D.W. ![]()
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