History comes to life with
humor and heartbreak as the Department of Theatre and Dance stages “Radium
Girls” Oct. 17-19 and 23-25.
The drama about a young
woman’s fight for her rights and her life will be set in the Jenkins Theatre in
the Noel Fine Arts Center at 7:30 p.m., Friday and Saturday, Oct. 17-18, and
Thursday through Saturday, Oct. 23-25. A 2 p.m. matinee will be offered Sunday,
Oct. 19. It is not suitable for young children.
Tickets are $19 for adults,
$18 for seniors, $14 for youth and $4.50 for students with UW-Stevens Point I.D.
Tickets are available at the UW-Stevens Point Information and Tickets Office,
located in the Dreyfus University Center concourse, by calling 715-346-4100 or
at http://tickets.uwsp.edu/index.php.
Set in the 1920s, “Radium
Girls” is about a real-life scandal that shocked America, said the show’s
director, Theatre Professor Steve Smith. Grace Fryer (played by Tatyana
Nahirniak of Cottage Grove) and some of her co-workers become ill with
radiation poisoning. She had direct contact with radium-based paint at her job,
where she paints luminescent dials for watches. Her fight for worker’s
compensation made big changes in workplace safety and child labor laws.
“’Radium Girls’ touches on
many areas, including feminist
theory, social class, corporate ethics, history, culture studies and workplace
safety,” said Smith. “It’s compelling because of its historic context. It also
has great roles for women.”
Playwright D.W. Gregory
combines historical fiction with courtroom drama and humor to tell a story most
of us don’t know, Smith said.
The Jenkins Theatre set has
been simply staged on an epic scale to represent the households, factory, town
squares, boardrooms and courtroom where the action takes place. A large clock
on the set represents the watch dials from the factory as well as how time is
running out for the women who work there.
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