Brock brings grim history to stage with Radium Girls
The radiation was on their clothes. On their hands. Even in their mouths.
And they believed their employers who told them it was harmless. That it was actually good for them. Until their teeth and jaws began rotting away and they started dying of cancer. Even then, the company they worked for – U.S. Radium – suppressed the information and blamed their deaths on syphilis.
This horrific bit of American history is the basis for D.W. Gregory’s Radium Girls, opening at the Marilyn I. Walker Theatre March 3. It follows a group of about 70 women who worked at an Orange, New Jersey factory near the end of the First World War, applying luminous paint to clocks, watches and military dials. Even while the company owners avoided exposure to the substance, they assured the women it was safe, even encouraging them to keep their brushes sharp with their tongues.
If you’re wondering how this could possibly happen, director Philip McKee suggests it has never really stopped.
“It’s kind of a perennial story, and the question is what are we — either in the context of manufacturing or as consumers — exposing ourselves to,” he says. “Poisoning us but making somebody else a lot of money, and therefore they’re invested in us not knowing that it’s harming us.”
The show is staged by Dramatic Arts students with Brock University’s Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts, and McKee is pleased with how they’re approaching some dark and complex subject matter.
“I’ve been very impressed with the level of skill,” he says. “For me, acting is about people being natural under unnatural circumstances.
“It’s something everybody can work at doing. Even where some of the actors’ inexperience is visible, as long as they’re being kind of honest and authentic, that, to me, helps create the impression I’m watching something real.”
The shows star Nikka Collison, Olivia De Sousa, Rebecca Downing, Ben Fallis, Sydney Fracolini, Bernadette Kahnert, Mackenzie Kerr, Adrian Marchesano, Samantha Mastrella, Elena Milenkovski, Michelle Mohammad, Sean Rashotte, Naomi Richardson and Colin Williams.
The 100-year-old story of corporate greed led to more stringent safety standards. The eventual lawsuit saw each surviving employee receive $10,000 and $600 per year annuity while they lived.
The inventor of the paint, Sabin A. Von Sochocky, died from exposure in 1928.