Read the full article by Dave Kempa at Sacramento News & Review
Imagine, as a young woman, having your decomposing jaw slowly ooze out of your gums in the form of black pus. Suffering in physical and mental anguish as, one by one, your teeth rot out of your head. There is nothing you can do but wait for the day — not far, now — that you will inexorably die, too young to have pursued any dreams of love or family or travel.
Now, imagine your employer was to blame.
This is precisely what happened to many working young women painting watches in 1920s American factories to make them glow in the dark using radium. Their fatal mistake? “Pointing” their paint brushes on their lips to give them a fine tip.
This is perhaps why director/actress Joanna Johnson so urgently wanted to bring these young girls’ struggle to life in The Artist’s Collective’s latest production of “Radium Girls,” playing through Saturday, Oct. 5 at Midtown Sacramento’s delightfully charming 35-seat Ooley Theater. It’s no easy task to create drama in a script set largely in courtrooms, doctors’ offices and factories, but Johnson and her players take on the task with purpose.