Cast

Catherine................................................. Phoebe Kuhlman

Tom.................................................................. Kyle Brown

Charlotte.................................................... Maggie Maguire

Frances....................................................... Nicole Trauffer

Pearl.............................................................. Sam Goober

Mr. Reed/Ensemble/Singer........................... Eliott Purcell

Doctors/Reporters/Singers/Judges.............. Mary Vasile,
                                    Julianne Quaas, and Matthew Appleby

Synopsis

These Shining Lives follows the compelling story of the “Radium Girls,” young women in the 1920’s and ‘30’s who painted the faces of luminous watches and clocks, unknowingly becoming some of the early victims of radium poisoning. Set in Chicago and Ottawa, IL, home of the Radium Dial Company, the play deals with the true story of Catherine Donohue, who begins working at the factory with the excitement of a newly liberated woman entering the workforce for the first time in 1922, through the litigation she pursued into the late 1930’s. This is a transcendent story, interweaving aspects of labor law, social and women’s history, and the personal details of these women’s lives. As we continue to contemplate the conditions of workers around the globe today, the issues raised in These Shining Lives clearly resonate in our 21^st century world.

“These Shining Lives has a humanistic glow…an initially comic and ultimately tragic look at how individual women find employment with a system more concerned with profit than safety.”  --Variety