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EDUCATION AHS taking 'Radium Girls' on the road Show will play in Ashland twice to raise money for trip Comment By Joe Zavala Ashland Daily Tidings Follow @@Joe_Zavala99 DailyTidings.com By Joe Zavala Ashland Daily Tidings Follow @@Joe_Zavala99 Posted Mar. 25, 2016 at 7:48 PM Updated Mar 25, 2016 at 7:49 PM By Joe Zavala Ashland Daily Tidings Follow @@Joe_Zavala99 Posted Mar. 25, 2016 at 7:48 PM Updated Mar 25, 2016 at 7:49 PM » RELATED CONTENT • Ashland High School thespians honored at state festival » Social News Amelia Sorensen vividly remembers watching Rex Putnam High School perform “The Diviners” at the Thespian State Festival in Salem last year. The Ashland High School senior was so impressed by the depression-era tragedy about a water-diviner she re-read the play and still thinks about it often. Now, Sorensen and her fellow AHS thespians will perform their own award-winning play, “Radium Girls,” at the four-day state festival, and Sorensen hopes that somebody in the audience will be as impacted by their production as she was by Rex Putnam’s. “I remember it so distinctly,” said Sorensen, who plays Grace Fryer, a young woman who contracted radiation poisoning, leading to a landmark case against her employer. “It was probably one of my favorite shows I’ve ever seen, so to be that (opening show) this year … I never know who’s watching, if it’s going to affect anyone. But just to be in that place is so exciting because it’s such an amazing theater.” Sorensen and the rest of the “Radium Girls” cast and crew will get a chance to make their own mark in Salem on Thursday, March 31, at the Elsinore Theatre, but they have a lot of work to do first. It takes 47 students to stage Ashland High’s production of “Radium Girls,” and all of them, from the actors in leading roles like Sorensen to the sound technicians and set designers, will have to pitch in next week in order to pack up the hundreds of pieces required to pull it off, squeeze them into the back of a semi-truck and shoot 240 miles up Interstate 5 before unpacking and rebuilding the set in the Elsinore Theatre in time for the state festival’s opening night. Further complicating a journey that’s already a challenge for all involved, the trip is very expensive — it’ll cost about $15,000, says director and AHS humanities teacher Betsy Bishop — and in order to help cover the cost the production team will be performing “Radium Girls” at Mountain Avenue Theatre on Monday and Tuesday night (general admission is $10, students and seniors $7). Not long after Tuesday’s show concludes a little after 9 p.m., the cast and crew will get to work breaking down the sets and packing everything, from costumes to the LCD projector, into the back of the truck. What they can’t finish by 11 p.m. Tuesday they’ll have to put off until Wednesday morning, which could be a scramble, since they need to hit the road by 11 a.m. in order to arrive in Salem by 5 p.m. “Oh man, I don’t even know where to begin with that,” said sophomore Kyle Storie, who plays United States Radium lawyer Edward Markley. “It’s definitely going to be a lot of work, but at the same time it’s an experience. And I think it’s all going to be worth it.” “It’s insane,” Sorensen said. The cast and crew are taking their show on the road because it was selected out of 18 full-length regional entries during a regional competition in Independence to be the opening night show at the state festival, marking the sixth time since 1998 that an AHS play has been picked for the annual gathering, according to Bishop. “Radium Girls” will only be the beginning of Ashland High’s participation at state. Several Ashland thespians also scored in the top 10 percent of their category at regionals to qualify, and senior Ceili Widamann was named a state finalist in playwriting for her one-act play “Violence,” which she will present at the four-day festival. Written by D.W. Gregory in 1999, “Radium Girls” tells the story of United States Radium factory workers who, throughout the 1920s, hand-painted watch dials using glow-in-the-dark radium, ingesting dangerous amounts of the toxic, cancer-causing chemical which they had been told was harmless. To sharpen their paintbrushes, the women moistened the bristles by inserting them into their mouths. The results were tragic: loss of teeth, bleeding mouths, deteriorating jawbones and, in some cases, death. While the subject matter’s heavy, there’s some humor, too, and Bishop said Ashland High’s production is a stripped down, shorter version of the original. It also has a fast-paced, cinematic feel, bolstered by an original soundtrack written by accomplished former Oregon Shakespeare Festival composer Todd Barton. “The play is only 95 minutes, but it packs a punch,” Bishop said. “It moves quickly.” Bishop said the stage, which she described as “minimalistic,” will cycle through seven different locations and makes use of slides to set scenes. “It has four levels on it,” she said. “It moves quickly and we have all these slides that show the time period, so we have all this photography from the 20s that you see from the real stories. So you see that in the background on the screens … it’s really a multimedia experience.” The play originally ran in Ashland back in November, but Sorensen is excited about taking it on again, both in front of her hometown audience and in front of a much larger group of fellow performers in Salem — about 400 spectators can fit into Mountain Avenue Theatre. Elsinore Theatre holds 2,000. The role, says Sorensen, is taxing. “I feel like I live a whole life within two hours,” she said. “Every time I go home I’m so tired because the arc of the show is incredible. When you come offstage you’re tired. You’re physically tired, you’re emotionally tired. And then you go home, you sleep and you do it all again. But it’s worth every moment.” Bishop says performing at the Thespian State Festival will be a memorable night for her team, and a great bonding experience. “They love acting and they love theater,” Bishop said of the festival audience. “So these kids are the most upbeat, excited audience you can possibly perform for. They clap before you start. They laugh at all the appropriate places. They laugh and cry and then they stand up and cheer at the end. And it is an adrenaline rush for these kids. "I told the kids, ‘This is going to be your only experience in theater, unless you get to Broadway, where you’re going to feel like you’re on Broadway.’ The lights are on you and everybody’s paying attention. You can’t hear a pin drop.” Those who would like to make a donation to help fund the trip to Salem can do so at the show Monday and Tuesday night. Joe Zavala is a reporter for the Ashland Daily Tidings. Reach him at 541-821-0829 or [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter at @Joe_Zavala99. By Joe Zavala Ashland Daily Tidings Follow @@Joe_Zavala99 DailyTidings.com By Joe Zavala Ashland Daily Tidings Follow @@Joe_Zavala99 Posted Mar. 25, 2016 at 7:48 PM Updated Mar 25, 2016 at 7:49 PM » Comment or view comments Reader Reaction » STAY INFORMED Email NewsLetter Sign Up Today Sign up for our newsletter and have the top headlines from your community delivered right to your inbox. Southern Oregon Directory Featured Businesses Loading... 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