The San Dimas Drama Dept., for four days (November 1st-4th), ran a most excellent production of Kate Moore’s Radium Girls. With a total run time of two hours, it proved to be a horrifyingly fascinating, and yet still beautiful, reenactment of the real-life events that took the lives of dozens of young women.

The Story begins with Grace Fryer, played by Junior, Soft Washburn, working in a Factory with two of her co-workers, Katheryn (Senior, Elsa Pignotti) and Irene (Senior, Isabella Calvo) during the early 1920s. The girls’ job was to decorate watches with radium-lined paint for the soldiers in WWII so that the dials would glow.

Washburn’s acting perfectly captured Fryer’s tragic story through a both memorable and emotional performance. From her crying on cue to the horrific night terrors of her dead paint-eating, blood-spitting friends. Washburn made it so you could feel Fryer’s pain, physical and mental, through the stage, where she stood only a few feet away. It was one that could bring tears to the eyes of even the most cynical viewer, tears that came from her own.  “When I signed up for the role I knew it was going to be a lot of work, but I was excited anyway because the character seemed so interesting and there was a lot of depth I could work with.” Washburn remarked, “Going in every night right before it starts [there’s] so much excitement because I get to share something that I love doing.”

The work gone into the set glowing clocks/paint, gruesome makeup, newspaper clips shown during parts of the performance, eerie music that played in between scenes, and the beautiful costumes that perfectly fit the setting, are what really made the show so amazing and worthwhile.

Junior Max Fertig, the Crew member in charge of Lighting Design and Operation, a part that really made the show in its ominous green light talked about what it was like working behind the scenes on such a visual art. “It pretty cool being crew and seeing [the actors] from backstage. [Crew] is a lot of fun and a little more fast-paced than you’d think it would be, but you could definitely get the hang of it if you were interested.”

One of the newer members, a freshman named Charlie Pratt, enjoyed working on the production so much, that he said, “It’s becuase I’ve been inspired by it, I actually want to stay in Drama for the rest of the three years I’m here.” He went on the say, “I met a lot of people that I wouldn’t have met otherwise, and I just like doing after-school stuff becuase it makes me feel involved somehow in the world.”

It was the amazingly presented dramatic irony of the story that made the audience cringe every time a character brought a radium-covered paintbrush to their lips. As a viewer in the 21st century, it feels like the dangers of radium should have been obvious, especially becuase of the amount of people that were dying becuase of it. But because of the dubious words of Dr. Marie Curie and many others(who would all later die from radium causes deaths), saying that important research had occurred confirming that radium would be a cure for cancer, and the Raduim-themed products continuously being advertised, it dismissed all other suspicions that the use of radium was the real reason for so many young and healthy girl’s deaths.

At last, though, the U.S. Radium Corporation was sued and the former workers were given their share of reparations; enough to last the rest of their tragically short lives. Even though everything had been taken care of, and the factory work was no more, there was still nothing that could be done to fix the irreversible harm that would continue to take the lives of people for decades to come. It was even found that all of the victims who had died from radium-related activity were later found to be glowing in their graves.

Overall, this play brought its viewers the shocking realization of the past horrors of the same world we live in now. It brought the thought that we too are like the people of that time, prematurely disregarding the problems that we unknowingly face, and relying too much on a confirmation bias that could only ever harm us.