For this year’s Fall play, the Alameda High School (AHS) drama department is putting on Radium Girls by D.W. Gregory. The play covers the story of women in the 1920’s who worked in factories as clock dial painters and fell victim to the toxic properties of the radium paint they worked with daily.

Carrying the themes of defiance, injustice, and activism, the play details an inspiring though bittersweet story of true historical events. Faced with the greed and fatal errors of their employers, the radium girls must decide whether to stand up to the Man and win their rights or to relent and settle into silence.

Grace Fryer, played by sophomore Sydney Mersch, is the face of the radium girls’ plight to the public eye, and while her condition worsens the pressure to win their case intensifies. Mr. Roeder, played by junior Aidan Boscovich, is president of the U.S. Radium Corporation who desperately works to defend his company’s image and deny any accusations of the harm caused by their product on the workers.

The play’s opening night was Thursday, Nov. 10 with a full house. Aubrey Davis, a senior at AHS, guided the performance to a successful conclusion from the back of the house as stage manager. This year’s new drama teacher Anneka Fagundes sat in the audience to enjoy the play after months of hands-on teaching and directing of the show and its actors.

The upcoming shows are this Thursday Nov. 17, Friday Nov. 18, and Saturday Nov. 19 at 7 pm at the Frederick L. Chacon Little Theatre on the AHS campus (2200 Central Ave.). Admission is $15 for adults, $10 for students/seniors. Purchase tickets at the door or at: https://gofan.co/app/school/CA22847.