Radium Girls

Act One

Grace Fryer, a former factory girl, is in a room in the U.S. Radium plant recounting her experience working in the factory to her attorney, Raymond Berry. Grace explains that she dropped out of school and started working at the factory when she was 15 years old, and that she enjoyed painting dials because it made her and the other factory girls feel like artists. Simultaneously, Arthur Roeder, current president of the U.S. Radium Corporation, separately speaks to his attorney, Edward Markley. Roeder argues that Dr, Von Sochocky, founder and former president of the Corporation, should be blamed for what they’re discussing instead of him. Roeder claims mixing powder into the paint and the overall processes in the factory were Von Sochocky’s original inventions, though neither knew of the harm it would do.

The narrative flashes back to 1918 New Jersey, when Grace and her friends Irene Rudolph and Kathryn Schaub are working in the factory. They jovially poke fun at each other