HHS Students to Present 'Radium Girls'

The following was provided by the Harrison Central School District.

Harrison High School students are currently in rehearsal for a production of Radium Girls, by D.W. Gregory.

Radium Girls will be performed at the Harrison Performing Arts Center at Harrison High School on Friday, Nov. 18 at 7pm, Saturday Nov. 19 at 7pm, and Sunday, Nov. 20 at 2pm. 

Sunday's performance will be followed by a 15-minute talk-back session with the cast and crew. The play is directed by Nina Mansfield, Harrison High School's Theatre Arts teacher.

Radium Girls is a moving drama, with plenty of comic moments, inspired by the true story of the women who worked at the U.S. Radium Corporation in Orange, New Jersey from 1917-1926. These women were hired to paint watch dials with glow-in-the-dark radium paint. Unbeknownst to them, the paint was toxic. Many of these women ended up suffering horribly and dying from radiation poisoning. The play traces the journey of Grace, a dial painter who contracts radiation poisoning, watches her friends die, and battles the corporation for a just settlement.

Harrison High School's R.E.E.F (Rescuing Earth's Environmental Future) Club will be organizing a lobby display during Sunday's performance. The objective of the R.E.E.F. Club is to make the student, staff and faculty body in the high school, as well as the surrounding community, aware of the beauty of the earth and the simple steps that can be taken to keep it healthy. Their lobby display will focus on the environmental impact of radium.

Tickets are $10 for adults and $5 for students and seniors.  No reservation necessary. Tickets will be available at the door. Radium Girls was originally produced by Playwrights Theatre of New Jersey and developed with a commissioning grant from The Ensemble Studio Theatre/Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Science & Technology Project.

The play is produced by special arrangement with The Dramatic Publishing Company of Woodstock, Illinois.