#Radium girls movie questions full

Two such students were senior marketing and management major Lily Wilson and senior communication sciences and disorders major Abby Sirrine who were there to support their friends in the cast. Many UK students were present in the audience, some for a class assignment and others for personal reasons. She receives positive letters from people across the country.Įven as she watches her friends and former coworkers die, gets into arguments about legal fees with her mother and feels the pressure from the factory’s board as they push back court dates, Fryer does not back down and sees her plan through to the end.Īfter the lights faded on the last scene on opening night, the audience gave a standing ovation as the 14-person cast came out to give its bows. She spreads her story through newspaper articles, trying day in and day out to hold the factory, especially company president Arthur Roeder, played by Jacob Ernst, accountable in a court of law.įryer’s quest for justice faces backlash from many people, but she is also met with an outpouring of support. Upon her discovery of what caused her condition, Fryer becomes desperate to save other women from her fate. Fryer and friend Kathryn, played by Alexandra Brown, witness their friend die and become worried about their own symptoms. This later proves to create a dire outcome for the ill-fated group later dubbed “radium girls.”After years of working at the factory, symptoms of illness start to pop up with alarming frequency. Unaware of the adverse effects of the substance, Fryer and her fellow workers frequently put their paint brushes in their mouths to get a nice point when painting the dials. Fryer is a 15-year-old worker in a factory who paints dials with radium. The play follows Grace Fryer, played by Lexi Brady. I think you need to scrap it and start again.” So I did.“Radium Girls,” a play presented by UK’s Department of Theatre and Dance, was performed from Oct. This isn’t the accessible narrative with the girls at the center of it. He read the first chapter, and said: “This isn’t what you do. We’ve both lived with this story for a long time. He’s also, as is the case with many writers, my first reader. His attention to the tiniest detail in his productions, his insight in encouraging people to uncover the truth of their characters - which is often several layers deep in a play - and the way he inspires people to embrace his vision, is something I’ve tried to emulate and take on. I’ve learned so much from him as a writer and a director and just as a creator. My husband, Duncan Moore, who is an exceptional theater director. Who is a creative person (not a writer) who has influenced you and your work? So I obviously had to bring to life several of them, because they all played a part in this fight for justice and in proving radium wasn’t this beneficial substance everyone thought it was. With these kinds of books, there’s normally one heroine you follow, but the thing about this story is that each girl contributed. I focused on a lot more individual women than I probably planned to originally. As part of my research, I interviewed family members as well.

#Radium girls movie questions full

I sensed that material might be available, but the other authors hadn’t quoted it to the full extent. When I first pitched it, I had no idea these things existed. When I pitched it, I didn’t know what I was going to find when I started researching: the girls’ voices, in court transcripts and diaries and letters. In what way is the book you wrote different from the book you set out to write? They knew what was happening, and that they were killing these girls not only the ones they had already killed but the ones who were still working.Ĭredit. I think the most shocking thing rather than surprising: looking at the companies’ files, and at their memos and realizing just how deep the corruption ran. What’s the most surprising thing you learned while writing it? I thought, If no one else has done it, why don’t I do it? Because they deserve their own story. The other books, fantastic as they are, focus on the legal side of things, or the scientific side. I realized that there was no book that focuses on the radium girls themselves, and told their story from their perspectives.

In my preparation, I wanted it to be as authentic as it could be, because it was a real piece of history, so I felt a sense of responsibility. I first discovered the girls’ story through directing a play about them in 2015, “These Shining Lives,” by Melanie Marnich, in London. When did you first get the idea to write this book?