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| Radium Girls at Metropolitan: March 19 - April 12, 2020 | |
| Posted by: Official_Press_Release 08:00 am EST 02/23/20 | |
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| New York Premiere RADIUM GIRLS by D.W. Gregory The true story of a young woman who stood her ground March 19 - April 12, 2020 Obie Award winner Metropolitan Playhouse presents the New York premiere of D.W. Gregory's RADIUM GIRLS, newly revised for a limited run from March 19 through April 12, 2020, at the Playhouse home: 220 E 4th Street. Laura Livingston (State of the Union, The Jazz Singer) directs. Previews Begin: Thursday, March 19, 2020 Opening Night: Saturday, March 21, 2020 Closing: Sunday, April 12, 2020 Radium in 1920: a miracle discovery with limitless applications, from iridescent paints and make-up to cancer treatment and health tonics. The craze for radium in the late 1910s and 20s meant big business for companies across the US. It also brought exciting opportunities to painters of illuminated watch faces: dexterous young women, often under 18, who kept the paint brushes pointed and supple with their lips. But when more and more of the girls found their bodies literally falling apart, their struggle for recognition and compensation pitted them against some of the most successful corporations of the day. Their battle set the model for future worker's protection laws in the United States, but not in time to save their own lives. RADIUM GIRLS is the story of Grace Fryer of Orange, NJ, and her dogged fight through the newspapers and the courts against US Radium and its lawyers, as well as her struggle to keep the support of her own family. The play is also the story of US Radium CEO Arthur Roeder, caught between his corporate ambitions and responsibilities, and the terrible realization that he has poisoned his devoted workers. The play is a celebration of fortitude and determination, study of denial and rationalization, and a reminder of the dangers of leaping into latest technology before we look at its effects. Metropolitan's production is already the New York premiere of Radium Girls but will also be a new version of the play with edits written for the production by playwright D.W. Gregory. The play is directed by LAURA LIVINGSTON, artistic director of Freestyle Repertory Theater and director of last season's hit revivial of State of the Union. The production stars HOLLY GOULD (The Ferryman, dir. Sam Mendes) in her Metropolitan debut as Grace Fryer and KELLY DEAN COOPER (Thunder Rock, End of Summer, A Man's World) as Arthur Roeder. The cast includes Metropolitan newcomers and veterans: SYDNEY BADWAY, ADAM BRADLEY , KATE FALK , TERESA KELSEAY (Thunder Rock, Poor of New York, A Marriage Contract, Deep Are the Roots), MARIE LENZI , KYLE MAXWELL, DAVID LOGAN RANKIN (Poor of New York, Shadow of Heroes, Within the Law). Set is by VINCENT GUNN (Shadow of Heroes, State of the Union), costumes by NYIT Award winner SIDNEY FORTNER (The Jewish King Lear, The Climbers, A Marriage Contract), and lighting by HEATHER M. CROCKER. D.W. GREGORY was hailed by the New York Times as “a playwright with a talent to enlighten and provoke” for Radium Girls, her most produced work. Other plays include Memoirs of a Forgotten Man; Molumby's Million, (Barrymore Award nominee); The Good Daughter; October 1962; and a new musical comedy, The Yellow Stocking Play. Two-time finalist for the Heideman Award at Actor’s Theater of Louisville, who presented So Tell Me About This Guy. Salvation Road was the winner of the American Alliance for Theatre in Education’s Playwrights in Our Schools Award. A member of the Dramatists’ Guild, Gregory is also an affiliated writer with The Playwrights’ Center in Minneapolis and an affiliated artist with NNPN. METROPOLITAN PLAYHOUSE, in its 28th season, explores America’s diverse theatrical heritage through lost plays of the past and new plays of American historical and cultural moment. The theater received a 2011 OBIE Grant from The Village Voice for its ongoing productions that illuminate who we are by revealing where we have come from. Called "invaluable" by the Voice and Backstage, Metropolitan has earned further accolades from The New York Times and The New Yorker. Other awards include a Victorian Society of New York Outstanding Performing Arts Group, 3 Aggie Awards from Gay City News, 21 nominations for NYIT Awards (3 winners), and 6 AUDELCO Viv Award nominations. Produced by special arrangement with The Dramatic Publishing Company of Woodstock, Illinois. This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council. PHOTOS: www.metropolitanplayhouse.org/pressphotos TICKETS $30 general admission, $25 students/seniors, and $10 children 18 and under. www.metropolitanplayhouse.org/tickets, or call 800 838 3006. PERFORMANCES March 19 - April 12, 2020 Thursday – Saturday evenings at 7:30pm; Sunday afternoons at 3:00pm OPENING NIGHT: Saturday, March 21st at 7:30 pm CLOSING: Sunday, April 12th at 3:00 pm ### Radium Girls: Inspired by a True Story of Fortitude and Failing "Radium is restoring HEALTH to Thousands" Within ten years of Marie and Pierre Curie's 1898 discovery of radium, American entrepreneurs had discovered a veritable gold mine. The element was crushed into powders, mixed into compounds, and used in countless applications. Cosmetics, paints, tonics, foot-warmers, disinfectants, cookware, polishes, inks, cocktails, tumor treatments--all seemed to benefit from its luminous and ostensibly invigorating power. Far from seeing its danger, numerous manufacturers promoted it as healthful, selling radium water, radium toothpaste, radium pads (for sore joints), and radium ointments, tablets, suppositories. At the same time, as the United States was drawn into WWI, one application could be readily seen as truly life-saving: the application of glowing radium based paints to the faces of watch and instrument dials, so they might be read by soldiers in the dark. As many as 4,000 workers in the US and Canada were hired to paint dials, oblivious to the irreversible and devastating effects of exposure to radioactive material. It is a brutal irony that the hands most skilled at such delicate work were those of mere girls, enticed by the high pay and spirited camaraderie of the factory studios, empowered as earners for their families and contributors to the war effort. The most lucrative of business opportunities depended on the most vulnerable of workers. Half-Life Though working with trace amounts of radium on any dial, the girls were exposed to enough of the material that their clothing and skin glowed as they left the factory. Most significantly, they ingested the material as a matter of course: the most efficient, least wasteful way to keep the paint brush bristles flexible and finely pointed was to wet it in one's mouth: "lip, dip, paint." And, unaware of the dangers of the paint, some playfully painted their fingernails and teeth with it. When factory workers began reporting painful illness and aches, including loss of teeth and necrosis in the jaw, employers' first response was to deny connection between the work and the employees' afflictions. Further efforts to disavow responsibility included purchasing the silence of doctors, dentists, and researchers, releasing only partial results of investigations, and even smearing the workers' reputations by reporting their illnesses to be the result of syphilis. Five women in New Jersey and five in Illinois posed legal challenges to their employers. In Orange and Newark, New Jersey, United States Radium Corporation settled out of court in 1928, after years of deferred litigation, compelled by extensive and sympathetic national news coverage that dubbed the workers the "Radium Girls." In Ottawa, Illinois, Radium Dial Company refused requests for compensation for medical bills begun in 1927, until a suit was finally brought in 1937, though the company had moved to New York. The women prevailed, yet Radium Dial appealed the case eight times, all the way to the Supreme Court, before finally paying compensation in 1939. While the suits and compensation could never restore health to the sufferers of radiation poisoning, these cases were fundamental to the establishment of improved working conditions around radioactive material and of industrial safety standards generally. They are likewise landmarks in the history of workers' rights litigation. Playing with History Focusing on the conflict between Grace Fryer, one of the five litigants against US Radium in Orange, NJ, and its CEO Arthur Roeder, Radium Girls takes liberties with the historical timeline and with its fictionalized dialogue. Designed for 10 actors to play 30 parts, it is a lively, fast moving odyssey of the many players in the historical drama. Nonetheless, based on the author's extensive research, the play is remarkably true to the personalities of the story, the spirit of the conflict, and the significance of the history. In this telling, the essential courage of the betrayed girls is primary. Faced with certain death and hardship, Grace's refusal to remain silent and accept payment for her and her friends' lives is inspiring as it is heartbreaking. As her health fails, her friends die, and her promising world falls apart, she grows only stronger in her commitment to recognition and justice, finding a triumphant liberation of spirit in her loss. At the same time, the willful, self-protective denial of Arthur Roeder, president of US Radium, is as vital and affecting to the drama. His faith in his own goodness and his embrace of his responsibility to his family and his ambitions blind him to his responsibility to the world that has mightily rewarded him. His story is the tragedy of a lost soul, who can only recognize his errors and the damage he has caused when it is too late. Finally, the casual consumption of radioactive material strikes a 2020 audience with an amused horror, but the play's underlying indictments of our careless bauble- and profit-driven culture are bracing. Radium was a dazzling fad and a marketer's dream. The companies that promoted it had far more too much to gain to be willingly transparent about the dangers their product posed to workers or consumers. The girls who believed their employers had too much to lose to question their treatment--until they had nothing left to lose at all. Today, we confront daily revelations of a self-inflicted environmental crisis, ruinous food choices, social media addiction, eavesdropping appliances, corporate safety coverups, disastrous financial speculations, and status quo manipulation of female employees. Are we, like Mary Shelley's doctor contemplating his monster, doomed to consider the consequences of our creations only after they have escaped our control? A New Play Renewed Metropolitan Playhouse is best known for its revivals of plays from the deeper past, but producing Radium Girls is central to the company's mission: through theater, to better understand our eclectic contemporary culture in light of its historical and cultural past. D.W. Gregory's play premiered at the Playwrights Theatre of New Jersey in 2000, and Metropolitan is delighted to honor the play's 20th anniversary with its first New York professional production. We are particularly honored that the author has taken the opportunity, inspired by twenty years of regional performances, to re-write portions of the play, with altered scenes and new dialogue. Metropolitan's is the world premiere of this version of Radium Girls. Metropolitan Playhouse Metropolitan Playhouse is unique in New York's and America's national theater. It is the only company specifically devoted to contemporary stagings that rediscover lost American plays and connect their insights to our contemporary world. Presenting expert productions in a small, thrust theater in Manhattan's East Village, the Playhouse offers its audiences intimate and surprising encounters with the past to illuminate our present. Metropolitan's inquiry into the context and culture of that past is not a matter of academic, nostalgic, or sentimental interest. It is an urgent exploration of the roots of today’s conflicts, a straining for perspective to understand them, and often a real and immediate discovery of forgotten solutions. Just as often as these plays from our past seem familiar—they are simultaneously quite strange: and they are always inspiring. In addition to its numerous awards and nominations, critics picks and rave reviews, the theater has been recognized by both The Village Voice and Backstage as "invaluable." D.W. Gregory was hailed by the New York Times as “a playwright with a talent to enlighten and provoke” for Radium Girls, her most produced work. Other plays include Memoirs of a Forgotten Man; Molumby's Million, nominated for a Barrymore Award by Philadelphia Theatre Alliance; The Good Daughter, and October 1962; and a new musical comedy, The Yellow Stocking Play, with composer Steven M. Alper and lyricist Sarah Knapp. She is also a two-time finalist for the Heideman Award at Actor’s Theater of Louisville, where her short comedy So Tell Me About This Guy was produced on a bill of short works. In addition, Gregory writes for youth theatre and makes occasional appearances as a teaching artist. Her new drama, Salvation Road, recently released by Dramatic Publishing, was the winner of the American Alliance for Theatre in Education’s Playwrights in Our Schools Award and developed through New York University’s New Plays for Young Audiences program. Her work has also received the support of the National Endowment for the Arts, the National New Play Network, the Maryland Arts Council (she is a two-time winner of the Individual Artist Award in Playwriting), the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the New Harmony Project and the HBMG Foundation. A member of the Dramatists’ Guild, Gregory is also an affiliated writer with The Playwrights’ Center in Minneapolis and an affiliated artist with NNPN. Director, Laura Livingston is a writer, director, actress and improviser. Co-Founder and Artistic Director of Freestyle Repertory Theatre, a 35-year-old improvisational theater company based in New York City, she has created long and short works from the inspirations of diverse audiences throughout the region and the country. Her plays, including The Purloined Detective, A Twice-Told Romance, An Inconvenient River, Quiet Howl, and Dear Friends and Gentle Hearts have all been produced by Metropolitan, with whom she has collaborated since 2004. She has directed evenings of the annual East Village Chronicles series for three years, and her revival at Metropolitan of The Jazz Singer (2011) was a critics choice of The New York Times, Back Stage, and nytheatre.com. Her production of The Detour was nominated for two NYIT Awards in 2013. Holly Gould, who stars as Grace Fryer, is a graduate of NYU Tisch School of the Arts who debuted on Broadway in Sam Mendes's The Ferryman. In November 2019, she worked at the Sundance Institute's Theater Program with Leigh Silverman developing Shaina Taub's The Suffragists. Kelly Dean Cooper plays Arthur Roeder and is a frequent player at Metropolitan, last appearing in Thunder Rock. Other credits include The Jewish King Lear, End of Summer, East Side Stories, Within the Law, and A Man’s World. Other New York companies include Classics in Color, Abingdon Theatre Co., Primary Stages, Circus Warehouse, and J. City Theatre. In Chicago, he played at Steppenwolf, Remy Bummpo, Writers Theatre, Chicago Dramatists, and was a member of Defiant Theatre. Regional credits include Milwaukee Shakespeare Company, Lake Geneva Theatre, and aboard the Crystal Harmony in Alaska, Central America, and the Caribbean. |
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