Indian River High School brings labor historical past to gentle in “Radium Girls”

Oct 14, 2025 —

 

Over 100 years ago, radium was considered a “miracle element.” It was used in products like makeup, elixirs, and clocks, where radium-infused paint was used to make them glow.

But then, the workers who painted those clocks started to get sick. The companies they worked for started to cover it up.

The Indian River High School Thespian Troupe is exploring that true story, which was a critical moment in labor history in the US, in its staging of the play “Radium Girls.'”

It traces the efforts of Grace Fryer, a dial painter, as she fights for her day in court. The show explores workers’ rights, corporate profit, and one of the very first workers’ compensation cases. Admission is by donation, and all the performances will be interpreted for the deaf community using ASL shadow interpretation. 

Amy Feiereisel recently spoke with the play’s director, Kristie Farr, and two of the high school actors, Dahlia LaBrake and Madelyn Morgan.

Their conversation has been edited for length and clarity. 

Amy FeiereiselIndian River High School brings labor history to light in “Radium Girls”

KRISTIE FARR: Hi, I’m Kristie Farr. I am a theater teacher at Indian River Central School District. I have been there for 27 years, and I am directing  “Radium Girls.”

DAHLIA LABRAKE: Hi, my name is Dahlia LaBrake. I’m a senior at Indian River and president of the Indian River Drama Club, and I play Grace Fryer in “Radium Girls.”

MADELYN MORGAN: My name is Madelyn Morgan. I’m a senior at Indian River as well, and I’m the vice president of the Indian River Drama Club, and I play Kathryn Schaub, who is Grace Fryer’s best friend.

AMY FEIEREISEL: Let’s talk about this story. Can you tell me about the plot of Radium Girls, which is based on a true story?

DAHLIA LABRAKE: Back in the 1900s, when radium was first discovered as an element, people thought that it was this miracle that would solve all of their problems just because it glowed. They would put it in a lot of cosmetic products. And in our show, particularly, we’re looking at the dial painters who would use radium-infused paint to paint over watches or clocks so that they could be seen in the dark. It was eventually discovered that radium is not, in fact, good to put in your body and has some pretty negative effects when you do that.

FEIEREISEL: Okay, so that’s what was going on in this time period. How are your characters involved?

MORGAN: Both Grace and Catherine, and also Catherine’s cousin, Irene, are all dial painters at the studio, and they would actually use a kind of way to paint where they would physically put the paintbrushes in their mouths to get a point on it, and then they would dip it into the radium.

Because of this, a lot of the girls at the dial painting studio actually got sick. And when Catherine and Grace discovered that radium was actually the thing that was causing all these girls to get sick and die, and that the company was just covering this up, they brought it to a lawyer and they brought it to another woman named Miss Wiley, and they kind of came together with a lot of the other dial painters to sue the corporation and try to get money to pay for all their medical procedures and stuff.

FEIEREISEL: Kristie, can you tell me what inspired you as the director to choose this play?

FARR: First of all, I had never heard of this story. One of my students suggested I read the play. They’d read it. And then I became very impassioned that, wow, how could this happen? Like, why would our government and big corporations allow these women to suffer and then try to cover it up? And so I just became very engaged with the story. I really love to do plays that will change somebody’s mind about something, that will get people thinking about injustices.

I also thought that we had a lot of resources in the area. We took them to the Women’s Rights Museum and had tours around there, and then we went to the Harriet Tubman House. It was just a really enriching day. And I feel this way about these women in “Radium Girls,” that they really paved the way for better labor laws. And yet women only gained rights at about the time that our story starts. So it’s just been an interesting historical adventure for us.

FEIEREISEL: Dahlia, Maddie, how has learning this history impacted you two? How does it make you think about these events?

LABRAKE: I think that it’s not always necessarily that the owner of a business wants to hurt their employees, but they always want to do what’s best for the business, and that might not be what’s best for their employees as well. We’ve had a lot of debate about the owner’s morality. Like, did he know? He definitely knew, but did he want everything bad to happen, or was he just trying to save his business?

MORGAN: And it is just a very upsetting event that occurred because the companies knew about it, but they still let these very young, teenage girls do this very dangerous thing. So it is kind of upsetting, and it does pull at your heartstrings a little bit, but it’s also a very important story that does need to be told so that history doesn’t repeat itself.

FEIEREISEL: Okay, speaking of history repeating itself, do you see any parallels from “Radium Girls “in our world today?

MORGAN: Yeah, I definitely think that I do see some parallels. Stuff like this still happens today. It might not happen in the United States, but workers’ rights are still being abused in a lot of other countries in different parts of the world. And it is important for us to realize that everyone should have the same rights, like a safe working environment or a minimum wage. age, and we shouldn’t be just letting people in other areas suffer for the same things that the radium girls suffered through.

FARR: I’ll also add, too, you know, we had proof in this story that the corporation, the presidents, they knew, and they had lead aprons and things for the males to use who were working in these factories. And yet they did nothing to protect the women. And I think sometimes, as much as we don’t want to admit it, we do see inequities between male and female workers, even in this country. And so I think it’s something we can’t get complacent about. That’s one of the things that I love about this story. If these women had not fought as hard as they did—and they weren’t sure if they were going to win or not, these cases— I wonder today what labor laws would look like.

FEIEREISEL: Now, looking forward to this weekend, your performances are almost here. What are you all feeling excited about?

LABRAKE: I think that a lot of people in our area have not experienced a production that’s been in the round, where the audience is on all four sides of the actors. So I’m excited to see how the audience will react to that, being so close to the actors and seeing every single minute detail.

MORGAN: Yeah, I’m also really excited for that. I’m also just excited to tell a story that I think all of us in the production care so deeply about, and we want to portray it as best as we can. And also, I’m just really excited for all of the makeup and costumes and stuff and all of the radium that’s going to be involved in this production.