BROOKINGS – Oft times the discoveries of science bring to mankind both good and evil. Such has been the case of the chemical element radium.

That will be the central element of Brookings Community Theatre’s upcoming performances of “Radium Girls,” a play “based on the true story of the dial painters who made labor history.”

“Radium Girls” will be staged at 7 p.m. Thursday through Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday in Fishback Studio Theatre at the SDSU Performing Arts Center.

Tickets are $15 for adults and $12 for students and seniors. They’re available at Brookings Book Company, 321 Main Ave., The Optical Shop, 112 22nd Ave. S., or at the door one hour before the show.

Discovered by the husband-and-wife team of Pierre and Marie Curie just before the turn of the 20th century, radium would prove to be a miracle cure and valuable during World War I when used for X-rays.

On the commercial scene, its glow-in-the-dark property made possible such luminous devices as watches, clocks and airplane instrument panels. But there was a downside.

The girls who did the painting, licking their brushes to “point” them for the delicate work, began to fall ill. And in the 1920s, dial painter Grace Fryer, one of the “Radium Girls,” began her battle with the U.S. Radium Corporation, in particular with company President Arthur Roeder. 

The play tells her story and the story of the other girls who worked with radium and the deleterious effects it had on their lives.

A true, timely story

Director Mike Thompson is a 12-time BCT veteran, either directing or on the boards. Thompson called the play’s theme “a little dark.”

Summing up the play, he explained: “The U.S. Radium Corporation is using radium in their paint because it makes it glow. To get a point on their brushes, the girls put them in their mouths, they get sick, they start dying and so they sue the company.”

Michael Taylor, as Arthur Roeder, is in his second BCT play. He was Drake the butler in this summer’s production of “Annie.” He didn’t plan to get a part in the well-known musical. His 7-year-old daughter sort of forced him into it.

“I got into it by giving my daughter a little confidence,” he explained, smiling. “She wanted me to go with her to the casting call. She wanted to be in the play, but she was kind of scared because she’s only 7.

“At that point the casting director said, ‘Hey, do you want to be in it?’

“She said, ‘Go ahead, daddy, go first.’ That’s kind of how it all started.”

Taylor, a lawyer, called playing Roeder “an interesting role, based on the inner struggles that somebody in a position of power really has. And how they kind of lose themselves sometimes in trying to do what they think is the right thing only to have it backfire in a sense and the consequences that you have to deal with in that.”

Taylor and Thompson agreed that Roeder could be considered a “villain.” He tried to mislead the Department of Labor in order to save his company and his employees’ jobs. 

The play is timely in that other such similar maneuvers have been tried by other company executives over the decades since the 1920s.

“This is a true story,” Thompson explained, “and it’s because of this that the U. S. labor laws were created.”

Moral failings of corporation

In the role of Grace Fryer is Nicole Flynn, an assistant professor in the English Department at South Dakota State University. She’s lived in Brookings for about six years and this is her first time in a BCT production. But she’s no rookie in the world of theatre.

“I used to do a lot of theatre growing up” she said. “I was a theatre major in college. I did community theatre after I graduated. Then I moved to L.A., where it wasn’t so easy to do. I was in grad school after that. I don’t know why I waited so long to get back in the game.”

She added that she read the play and “was really drawn to the material” and that “it is the period that I work on in my research.”

Flynn sees in Grace “not someone who naturally was drawn to the spotlight or drawn to be vocal as advocating for even herself, let alone for anyone else.

“But she just couldn’t walk away from the wrongs that were done to her and her friends and the suffering that she saw in the clear moral failings of this corporation that she and a lot of the girls were devoted to.”  

If Grace were alive today, would she be a member of the #MeToo movement? “Absolutely,” Flynn replied. “She’d be grass roots, organizing left and right.”

Brookings resident Tom Delaney, in his third BCT production, all directed by Thompson, plays Dr. Von Sochocky, who discovered the formula for luminous radium paint.

“He ends up being a scapegoat,” Delaney said. “I don’t think that the radium corporation knew, really didn’t know, until somewhere down the line (about the dangers of radium).” 

As the play progresses, Von Sochocky leaves the corporation and unknowingly becomes progressively sicker from his own exposure to radium. 

“This is the first time I’ve done a ‘true story,’” Thompson said. “So we had to make sure that the cast brings out the proper emotions. And I think they really do nail it.” 

The 13-member cast plays a total of about 25 roles. 

“I’ve got an amazing assistant director (Andrea Mayrose) who’s helping me out,” Thompson added. “We’re going to put on a really good show.”

Contact John Kubal at jkubal@brookingsregster.com.