Cyndi Loza

Galena High School students bring together early 20th-century history and social justice tonight in their school play, “Radium Girls.”

The students retell the true story of a woman’s battle in the 1920s against the United States Radium Corporation factory that exposed her and her co-workers to radiation.

The play will debut at 7 p.m. tonight at Galena High School, 3600 Butch Cassidy Way, and is continues through Saturday. Tickets are $9 at the door and $7 for students and seniors.

“It’s kind of like the story of two good characters,” said junior Alex King, who portrays the owner of the radium plant. “There’s no real bad character in the play. The ones that seem evil were kind of forced into it because of their job.”

The play focuses on the lives of Grace Fryer, a worker exposed to radium, and Arthur Roeder, the owner of the radium plant. It traces how both characters in the story come to terms with the fact that the plant exposed their workers to radiation and caused their deteriorating health and eventual deaths.

“I liked how my character was really timid in the beginning, but over time she became independent,” said senior Amanda Casey, who portrays Fryer.

Fryer worked in a watch making plant with other women who painted watch dials with a luminescent paint that contained radium. In the course of their work, they would take their paint brushes and, in order to get a finer point, smoothed them out with their lips, unaware that they were ingesting a great deal of radium.

When the girls began to get sick, the plant’s management team was not willing to accept responsibility for their illness or compensate the women for their medial expenses. Fryer developed serious bone decay in her mouth and back.

“Even when they started getting the idea that this wasn’t a good thing, it still didn’t stop,” said Michael Maupin, Galena drama teacher and the play’s director. “That’s why it’s such a touching play.”

Though the play deals with serious issues, Maupin said the play has a few comedic moments in various scenes.

“I’ve always been the kind of director that likes a little bit of comedy in his dramas and drama in his comedies,” Maupin said.

King said he was shocked when he got the lead role.

“I was pretty psyched when I actually got this role,” King said. “I didn’t expect a big part.”