This isn’t a fairy tale, though it starts like one. It’s not a tragedy, though it ends like one.

Catherine Donohue’s opening line to the audience in These Shining Lives sets the tone for a play that is hard to categorize.

Based on the true story, it shows us the lives of the “radium girls” who painted dials with glowing radium-infused paint to create watches that could be read in the dark.

Catherine Donohue and her coworkers at Radium Dial in Ottawa, Illinois, were among the many women who worked in conditions that exposed them to  …

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The cast of These Shining Lives, Mt. Vernon-Lisbon Community Theatre’s first production of the 2020 season, has been chosen and rehearsals have begun.

Included in the Shining Lives cast are:

• Kim Benesh,
• Schuyler Bieber,
• Larry Hansen,
• Kellyn Howell,
• Craig Jarvie,
• Mary Morgan-Blacharski,
• Kim Novotny,
• Braden JP Rood,
• Jennifer Smith,
• Lisa Smith,
• Len Struttmann.

Kami Zbanek Hill is directing. Production dates are March 6-8 and 13-14 in the First Street Community Center’s Uptown Theatre.

These Shining Lives by Melanie Marnich is a fictionalized account of the real life “Radium Girls” of the 1920s and ‘30s who

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