This school year, the Joplin High School Theater Department is doing These Shining Lives by Melanie Marnich as their fall play. As opposed to past plays such as Spongebob, Shrek, The Little Mermaid, and Mean Girls, this play follows a true story about the mistreatment of women working in a factory in the 1900s. The play follows four women, Charlotte Purcell, Pearl Payne, Frances O’Connell, and Catherine Donohue through the horrors of working at a factory and their legal battle for better working conditions.
The theater department says, “As we move further into preparing our production of These Shining Lives for an audience, we feel it is important to educate our crowd on the people that will be portrayed on stage.”
The Radium Dial Company opened in 1918 in Ottawa, Illinois, making watch and clock dials with glow-in-the-dark paint. Uncommon for the time period, 92 women went to work there. Bosses encouraged these women to work fast, as they were paid by the piece. They even told women to lick their brushes so they could be more efficient. Little did they know, the paint was laced with radium, an extremely toxic chemical. The men who ran the factories assured the women the radium was safe and even told them it improved health and made them beautiful. In 1937, Radium Dial was closed and reopened under the name Luminous Processes (LPI). However, LPI was soon forced to close because of radium contamination. Over time, working at these factories poisoned the women working in them. They suffered from things such as cancer, osteoporosis, amputated limbs, crushed spines, and more.
A group of 14 women who were either fired or quit Radium Dial decided they had enough. They formed a group named “The Society of the Living Dead” to sue the company that had taken so many lives. The women portrayed in the play all had some part in the legal battle for justice. For instance, Donohue testified against Radium Dial even when the radium poisoning had almost taken away her ability to speak. She acted out the awful working conditions to a judge, recalling how the poison gave her tumors and rotted out her teeth. Right at the end of the trial, she passed away from radium poisoning. Her friend, Pearl Payne, devastated at the loss, became even more determined to get justice.
As a young girl, Payne was very family-oriented and dreamed of having children. The radium poisoning took this away from her, and she was forced to have a hysterectomy. Additionally, one side of her face was paralyzed. Other women, such as Purcell, had body parts amputated. Purcell thought she was safe from poisoning after she gave birth to a healthy baby, but after a consistent pain in her arm, it was discovered she needed an amputation to rid her body of the poison. O’Connell had health issues relating to the radium poisoning but ended up living well into her 70s.
These Shining Lives will be performed in the JHS Black Box from November 1st through November 4th. As opposed to the regular theater, shows in a black box allow more creativity in things such as stage sets and audience interaction. However, due to this, there are limited seats available. So, make sure you purchase tickets to see this inspiring show!
