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These Shining Lives: Radium Girls in Life and Theatre

These Shining Lives: Radium Girls in Life and Theatre

Emily GanfieldThis forum will explore the story of Catherine Donohue, Grace Fryer and other women who would go down in history as “Radium Girls.” In the 1910s and 1920s, women workers painted watch faces with a paint containing radium to make them glow in the dark. The workers developed serious health issues and died due to their exposure to radium, which prompted them to activism that resulted in improvements in workplace health and safety. Recent books, movies and plays have popularized the experiences of the Radium Girls. The play These Shining Lives by Melanie Marnich is one such example. In this one-week forum, Assistant Professor of Theatre Arts Emily Ganfield will use the play as a way into both the history and the recent artistic representations of the Radium Girls. In the first part of the session, we will learn about the actual people and events that inspired the play. Then, we will turn to the play itself, experiencing a live reading of portions of it. Throughout, the presentation will use the Radium Girls to show how theatre is a shining example of the ways art can inform and educate audiences about real people and events that deserve to be more widely known.

Thursday Forum is held in Kesler Auditorium on the first floor of Hickok Hall. Each weekly session begins with registration and refreshments from 8:45-9:15 AM, followed by the lecture until 11:30 AM. The presentations blend lecture, media such as film and music, and discussion.

Admission to each four-week forum series is $40. Admission to individual lectures and each session of two- and three-week forums is $12 per week. Admission includes the lecture and morning refreshments of coffee, tea and pastries. Payment can be made in person on Thursday mornings by cash or personal check. Credit card payments can be processed by registering online in advance at www.coe.edu/why-coe/events/thursday-forum.

In the event of inclement weather, consult local media outlets to find out if the day’s forum will take place.