The first play of the year produced by the South Hills thespian group is based on the true story of The Radium girls who were , in the 1920’s, women that contracted radium poisoning while working in various factories throughout the US. Students of South Hills were asked for their review after attending the play. 

Although not everyone knows the full story of Radium Girls, Isabella Cowley (11) is amongst the ones who do. Cowley sheds light on the girl’s struggles with the Radium corporations denying all allegations made against them in order to keep making money.

“I like the girls’ journey, but also the people in charge of the Radium Corporations and how they were dealing with it. The play showed both sides of how the girls wanted justice, while everyone else was focusing on the money,” Cowley said.

Following his attendance at the play Juan Garcia (12) recognized the overall amount of dedication the actors put into the making of the play and sets. He also mentions how the set designs helped truly enlighten and provide imagination to the story and viewers. 

“I can definitely see the passion and hard work they put into the set designs and what they made with the job was very impressive (and on a school budget), you can’t help but just admire that,” Garcia said.

Despite the crowd there is a different angle to the story. Crew members who worked alongside the actors to help make the story of Radium Girls come to life, shared their experiences of being behind the scenes. Ashley Sendejas (12) was the head costume designer for the show, and explained how she was able to project the story through the characters’ costumes.

“The story was really interesting because it was kind of within the mystery genre,which I love. So through creating the costumes I had to take the scenes and then display it with the costumes. So for instance in one of the scenes it was the dream scene and so there were actors that needed aprons with paint, spread all over them to replicate the scene,” Sendejas said.

Crew member Hailey Westervoorde (9) mentioned that although it’s almost always a good time working the cast and crew, that doesn’t take away from all the hard work and responsibility you have when working the show.

“It’s really fun. A lot of it is just like moving props on and off stage, but there’s also getting the actor’s ready to go back on stage, checking mics, making sure that everything’s good to go for the scene. All and all I think we pulled it off pretty good and I think we did a really good job working as a team, ” Westervoorde said.