Taking to the stage, the Falcon Players performed their fall play Radium Girls on Nov. 16-18. 

Radium Girls shows a unique perspective on the historical event that took place between the 1910-1930’s. 

The leads of the play, Grace Fryer (junior Mary Corkery), Kathryn Schaub (junior Alivia Valdez), and sophomore Skylar Gray (Irene Rudolph) portrayed girls working in a factory painting dials for the war using radium. The girls in the factories were unaware of the dangers of radium and suffered from multiple health problems for the rest of their lives. Valdez and Corkery did a splendid job portraying the struggles the radium girls endured by demonstrating the physical hardships they had to go through. Throughout the play, both characters get physically weaker and have to be in wheelchairs and use canes. Dr. Von Sochocky (sophomore Charlotte Talleur) created the paint that the girls used that caused their health problems and worked with Arthur Roeder (junior Ridwan Osman) who was the head of the factory and instructed the girls to use the paint. Dr. Von Sochocky was aware of the dangers radium posed but let Roeder naively let the girls continue to use it. Both characters did a great job portraying their roles.

They both demonstrated the upper hand they had in the storyline very well. Perchance. Mrs. Alma Macneil (senior Courtney Lampen) was a supervisor at the factory; she did a great job to ensure all of the factory girls were doing their jobs well and kept the company running smoothly. The radium girls went on to sue the company to fight for justice after they realized that their health problems had come from the factory. Fryer sought after Kathrine Wiley (sophomore Mary Donovan) who was the director of the New Jersey Consumers League. She got Fryer in contact with Raymond Berry (sophomore Piper Covert) who represented the girls against the company and helped them go on to win the case. Roeder and the Radium Corporation were defended by Edward Markley (senior Aidan Eslick). The characters did a great job of displaying the important role they had in the girls’ lives to bring them justice. The lawyers portrayed the tension that was happening between both sides of the case very well. It was a difficult process because they had issues with the statute of limitations. Berry and Wiley had to put up a long fight against the issue of the statute of limitation for the case to get justice for the girls. Since the radium poisoning took place many years ago, but the source wasn’t discovered until recently, the statute of limitations wasn’t applied to the case. The girls won and settled with the radium corporation and received lots of money. In the ending scene, it flashes to the future of Fryer painting in a graveyard and eventually passing away. Roeder comes to the graveyard and his daughter Harriet Roeder (sophomore Lauren Laffluer) explains that it’s not his fault the girls passed away but he still feels responsible and reminisces about what happened. This scene was very impactful and showed how the situation affected not only the radium girls. The set of the play included a rotating stage which helped add a cool effect to the storyline. It showed an interesting point of view and made scenes more intriguing. There was also a projector screen, which provided backstory and visual interest to different scenes to help move the production along without any confusion.