The factory where it took place was an EPA Superfund site that only recently has been dismantled. N.J.-very near where the play is set–so the story of the Radium Girls is a home-town tragedy with many echoes into the present day. She suggested that the radium girls exemplify what it means to be confident in who you are and stand up for yourself.” And student Patricia Boccard focused on the theme of corporate responsibility by relating the radium girls’ story to the current domestic debate surrounding hydraulic fracking. This news came to me when Google Alerts swept up an announcement by the university about two of its student winning an essay contest inspired by the play.Īccording to the announcement, student Gabrielle Hunt wrote about “modern day ‘slut-shaming,’ or the act of making a person, especially a woman, feel guilty or inferior for certain behaviors or circumstances that deviate from traditional gender expectations. That’s 1700 students, roughly, who were required to read the play and discuss it in freshman seminar as well as in other courses.

But I didn’t know that Seton Hall had selected RADIUM GIRLS as its summer reading assignment for its incoming freshman class last year.

I knew that Seton Hall University had a production going in the fall. Once in a while you get a quotable gem, but not too many surprises.Įxcept for the alert I received the day after Christmas. Most of the time it highlights calendar listings and occasional features about productions I was already aware of, but it’s a nice way to catalogue press coverage. I’d set up a weekly tracker to follow productions of a few published scripts. Some amazing news came to me through Google Alerts a little while ago.

Factory town afterlife