Summit Teens To Perform Play About Orange, NJ's 'Radium Girls'

SUMMIT, NJ — The Summit High School Performing Arts program is “Keeping the Arts Alive in Summit” by presenting their two fall performances outdoors:

• The annual fall fundraiser, “Cabaret on the Green,” an evening of Broadway numbers, will be performed on the Village Green Oct. 9 at 7 p.m.
• The fall play, "Radium Girls," will be presented Oct. 21-24 in the SHS library courtyard, newly christened “The Performing Arts Garden: Where Summit Artists Go to Grow.”

The fall play, "Radium Girls," may be of particular interest to North Jersey residents.

It's based on the true story of young female dial painters set in the U. S. Radium factory in Orange, New Jersey in the 1920s. When radium was first discovered in the early 1900s, it was seen as a miracle cure for everything from cancer to asthma, but one of its most popular uses was in a luminescent paint applied to the dials of watches and clocks to make them glow in the dark.

The young dial painters were instructed to dip their brushes in the paint, then touch the brush to their lips to achieve a fine point, thus ingesting small doses of radium all day.

Hundreds of the painters suffered serious health issues and 50 died from the effects of radium poisoning.

Radium Girls centers around one of the dial painters, Grace Fryer, who struggles to find the cause of a mysterious disease afflicting her and other girls who worked in the Orange, N.J. factory. For 10 years, Grace fought for her day in court.

Director Anne Poyner says, “The play is a beautiful, warm, moving, theatrical ensemble piece, but it is also a very powerful historical story that examines a variety of issues like corporate greed and corruption and industrial safety standards, as well as the empowerment of women in the workplace.”

Appropriate for all ages, "Radium Girls" will be performed all four days at 7 p.m.

All health protocols have been followed during this process. Chairs will be socially distanced and Hilltopper Stage Productions blankets and masks will be sold. The Friday night performance will also be live-streamed.

Tickets are $13 for students and seniors; $15 for adults; and $10 for the link to the Friday livestream. Tickets will be available at Showtix4U.com beginning Friday, Oct. 9.

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