Dramaturgical Statement

In 1898 Marie and Pierre Curie discovered the element Radium and subsequently won the Nobel prize for their work in 1903. This discovery would set off a chain of events that would have long-lasting consequences: it would usher in the atomic age, start new booming industries, pave the way for the Manhattan project, and claim an untold amount of lives in the process. None of this was apparent to the Curies at the time.

Early applications showed that the element was effective in destroying cancerous cells. No one knew exactly what else this miracle element could do. The detrimental effects of radiation were either not known, or not openly advertised to the public. Companies all over the world began advertising it as a health product, putting it in everything from drinking water to suppositories. The potential of radium seemed limitless.

One radium-based industry that began to boom in the teens and twenties was painting watch dials with luminescent, radium-based, paint. In 1922 The Radium Dial Company set up a studio in Ottawa, Illinois. This is where playwright Melanie Marnich sets These Shining Lives. By following the lives of actual dial painters in Ottawa, she gives the audience a glimpse into the struggles, joy, pain, and humanity that these women experienced.

The world of Marnich’s play is one where time doesn’t flow uniformly. Years can pass in scene transitions or alternatively moments can extend out, lingering indefinitely onstage as these women defiantly cling to whatever hope and joy they can manage to find.

Marnich makes it clear in the notes of the script that these women are not victims. The women in this play (and their real-life counterparts) show incredible spirit, courage, heart, and determination. They loved, argued, laughed, grieved, and as Kate Moore writes in her book The Radium Girls, “They made every second count.”

-          Blake Watson, Dramaturge