KEARNEY — This May the Kearney Community Theatre is presenting the show, “Radium Girls.”
In 1926, radium was a miracle cure, Madame Curie an international celebrity, and luminous watches the latest rage—until the girls who painted them began to fall ill with a mysterious disease.
“Inspired by a true story, Radium Girls traces the efforts of Grace Fryer, a dial painter, as she fights for her day in court. Her chief adversary is her former employer, Arthur, an idealistic man who cannot bring himself to believe that the same element that shrinks tumors could have anything to do with the terrifying rash of illnesses among his employees,” the Kearney Community Theatre (KCT) website states.
“As the case goes on, however, Grace finds herself battling not just with the U.S. Radium Corporation, but with her own family and friends, who fear that her campaign for justice will backfire,” KCT notes.
“Called a ‘powerful’ and ‘engrossing’ drama by critics, Radium Girls offers a wry, unflinching look at the peculiarly American obsessions with health, wealth, and the commercialization of science,” according to the Dramatic Publishing website.
The show is directed by David Rozema.
The shows will be Thursday-Saturday, May 2-4, and May 9-11 at 7:30 p.m. and Saturdays May 5 and May 12 at 2:30 p.m.
“One of the most infamous and tragic commercial uses of radium was in the luminescent paints that decorated the dials of clocks and watches starting in 1917 and through the 1930s,” according to article produced by Stanford University.
“Many of the factory workers for The Radium Dial Company, which produced luminescent watches, were young women, whose work painting the dials was a streamlined process coined ‘lip, dip, and paint.’ The workers would use their mouths to shape the brushes of the paintbrushes to a tapered point for an average of 250 times a day, which amounted to ingesting almost 2 grams of paint and up to 43 micrograms of radioactive materials per day,” according to Stanford University.
“Slowly but surely, all of these dial workers – later called the Radium Girls – began to experience radioactive poisoning. Symptoms of illness included jaw necrosis and tooth loss, nonhealing ulcers, bone fractures, anemia, and cancer, ultimately leading to violent and agonizing death,” Stanford University stated, “In the late 1920s, as the adverse health effects of radium exposure became apparent, many of the women working at the plant filed a lawsuit against the company, and industrial use of radium began to decline.”
