Staging a story of a fight to make things right
Elora Community Theatre’s production of Radium Girls is now running at the Fergus Grand Theatre
A TRUE STORY AND A
docudrama-style production bring the latest offering from the Elora Community Theatre, now on stage at the Fergus Grand Theatre.
Radium Girls tells the story of girls and women who worked in paint factories where, during the First World War, they painted things like watches and airplane dials with paint that contained radium. As they worked the women would swish the paint brushes around in their mouths. This exposure caused health issues, including toothaches, back pains, cancer and sarcoma, and eventually led to the deaths of many of the women.
The production follows the story of Grace Fryer (played by Rachel Estok) and her colleagues in their attempt to get justice and their battle against the
U.S. Radium Corporation. Director Catherine Johnson says the story of the workers was a landmark case in many ways.
“The play really centers on the fight for compensation from the company and across the 1920s and unions were just coming out. Workers compensation, women’s rights
– it was kind of a storm of radical social change. And right almost to the end, of their deaths, they fought to get the settlement that they deserved from the company,” she said.
Staging the play poses more than a few challenges, Johnson said.
“It’s a difficult play to do because of the style, because of the way that it is told. It is told in flashbacks. It’s a historical drama, so it’s called a docudrama style,” Johnson said.
To aid the audience, Johnson has added the use of projections that include some of the actual news reports on the radium girls and their fights. She has also enlisted the help of choreographer and stage manager Norah Wardell.
“I’ve always directed with a lot of music and movement… so I moved into the realm of dance and emotion to get across the suffering and so there’s a lot of times that they come in and they dance to engage the audience,” Johnson explained.
The production also employs green lighting to match how the workers would look after work, which earned them the nickname “ghost girls.”
According to Johnson the medical examiner who took up their case is quoted as saying that he was “haunted by their ghosts.” Bodies that were later exhumed were still glowing, Johnson said.
“That was the driving force behind my interpretation of the play, so I have the ghost of the girls telling the story.”
While the play, written by D.W. Gregory, traditionally has a small cast playing several roles Johnson took a different approach with the majority of the cast playing only one role. As the play has been in production at Fergus for over a year the cast had significant time to research their roles.
“We have a very healthy artistic community in Fergus, Elora and Guelph. So I decided that wherever possible I was going to have each person in a separate role because it’s very difficult to follow the story. … I’m really fortunate because the cast that I got is really dedicated to the story,” she said.
“It’s not a typical type of play that our community theatre does. And they took that journey with me on how to interpret and how to work with it.”
Radium Girls is Elora Community Theatre’s entry into the Western Ontario Drama League competition and is set to be adjudicated on Friday. It runs until February 18, with performances tomorrow, Saturday and Sunday at 8 p.m. and an additional 2 p.m. showing on Sunday.
“I think it’s saying something important to everyone in the community. And above all that I think I put something entertaining on the stage because that’s really what theatre is all about,” Johnson added.
More information can be found online at www. fergusgrandtheatre.ca.