AUDITIONS
Sunday 10/4/26 from 10am-12pm
Monday 10/5/26 from 7-9pm

Callbacks: 10/6/27 from 7-9pm

at The Ridgefield Theater Barn

Please read the synopsis & character descriptions. Come to auditions prepared with sides for one or more of the tracks. You are welcome to use a dialect at the 1st round of auditions, but it is not required. We will ask those called back to do so with an accent that relates to the character. 

*While it is not required to provide advance registration for auditions, if you would like to submit your materials in advance of the auditions, you are welcome to do so here.

PLOT SUMMARY

Set in Orange, New Jersey, between 1918 and 1928, Radium Girls follows Grace Fryer, Kathryn Schaub, Irene Rudolph, and the other young women employed by the U.S. Radium Corporation to paint luminous watch dials. The work is considered glamorous, well paid, and important to the war effort. Following company instructions, the painters repeatedly shape their brushes with their lips, unknowingly ingesting the radioactive paint. Years later, the women begin suffering mysterious and devastating illnesses, while company officials insist that radium is harmless and deny any responsibility.

After watching her friends become sick and die, Grace begins to question the people and institutions she has always trusted. With the help of consumer advocate Katherine Wiley and attorney Raymond Berry, she joins the surviving painters in a legal battle against the corporation. The company responds with misleading scientific reports, public-relations campaigns, legal technicalities, and repeated delays—hoping the women will die before their case can reach court.

At the center of the opposing side is company president Arthur Roeder, an ambitious businessman who wants to believe that his work benefits society. As the evidence against the company grows, Roeder becomes increasingly trapped between his conscience and his desire to protect the business he built. Told through naturalistic scenes, rapid transitions, courtroom confrontations, news reports, and moments of dark comedy, Radium Girls examines corporate responsibility, the exploitation of workers, the power of public opinion, and the courage required to challenge those in authority.

CHARACTER BREAKDOWN

Please Note:
Actors of all backgrounds and gender identities are encouraged to audition.

This will be cast as a nine-person ensemble—five women and four men, with most actors playing multiple roles. You will audition for an actor track. 

 Performers must be comfortable making rapid, clearly defined transformations through voice, movement, posture, and minimal costume changes. The play moves between naturalistic drama, direct address, heightened comedy, courtroom scenes, and more stylized or dreamlike sequences.

The character ages indicate the ages represented in the story, not necessarily the required ages of the performers.

Track 1 — Grace Fryer (Female)

Roles: Grace Fryer

The central character of the play and the only woman in the ensemble who does not double.

Grace begins as a responsible, trusting fifteen-year-old who leaves school to help support her family. She is eager to please, hesitant to question authority, and proud of her work at the radium plant. Over the course of approximately eleven years, illness and betrayal force her to become a determined advocate for herself and the other dial painters.

This is a major dramatic role requiring the actor to portray youthful innocence, romantic hope, physical decline, fear, anger, heartbreak, and hard-won moral strength. Grace should never become merely fragile or saintly; her journey is one of discovering her own voice and learning to use it.

Track 2 — Kathryn (Female)

Roles: Kathryn Schaub, Societywoman, Harriet Roeder, Shopgirl and Board Member #1

Kathryn Schaub is Grace’s close friend and Irene’s cousin. She begins the play at fifteen. Romantic, imaginative, excitable, and sometimes unintentionally funny, Kathryn tends to embellish stories and find drama in ordinary events. Beneath that enthusiasm is fierce loyalty. Irene’s suffering turns Kathryn into one of the first women willing to question the company and demand answers.

The actor must handle Kathryn’s comedy, youthful energy, fear, grief, physical deterioration, and emotional vulnerability.

This track also includes several sharply contrasting characters:

• Societywoman/Cora Middleton: polished, status-conscious and theatrically civic-minded.

• Harriet Roeder: Arthur’s adventurous nine-year-old daughter, later seen as an adult in the 1940s.

• Shopgirl: a heightened member of the public who comments on the Radium Girls’ lawsuit.

• Board Member #1: a male company board member focused on protecting the business.

This actor should be particularly adept at physical and vocal transformation.

Track 3 — Irene/Wiley (Female)

Roles: Irene Rudolph, Katherine Wiley, Mrs. Michaels, Photographer and Board Member #2

Irene Rudolph is Kathryn’s cousin and one of Grace’s closest friends. Seventeen at the beginning of the play, Irene is bold, irreverent, skeptical, and less sentimental than Kathryn. She enjoys teasing Grace and is often the first person willing to say what everyone else is thinking. Her confidence and humor make her decline especially affecting.

Katherine Wiley is the executive director of the New Jersey Consumer’s League. Articulate, disciplined and politically astute, Wiley understands how public opinion can be used to force institutional change. She genuinely wants justice for the women, but she also sees their personal stories as strategic tools. The role requires authority, intelligence, charisma and the ability to suggest both compassion and calculation.

Additional roles include:

• Mrs. Michaels: an expressive and enthusiastic believer in the restorative powers of radium water.

• Photographer: a brisk tabloid employee seeking marketable images of the women.

• Board Member #2: a male corporate board member concerned with legal and financial exposure.

The contrast between the informal, working-class Irene and the controlled, professional Wiley should be especially distinct.

Track 4 — Sob Sister/Mothers (Female)

Roles: Sob Sister, Mrs. Fryer, Mrs. MacNeil, Clerk and Elderly Widow

Nancy Jane Harlan, the “Sob Sister,” is a tabloid reporter for the New York Graphic. Energetic, theatrical, opportunistic and relentlessly cheerful—even when discussing suffering and death—she understands that tragedy sells newspapers. The role requires direct audience address, speed, comic timing and bold presentational instincts.

Anna Fryer/Mrs. Fryer is Grace’s mother. She is practical, hardworking and overwhelmed by medical bills and family responsibilities. She loves Grace deeply but pressures her to accept the company’s settlement because she fears the family will lose everything. Her choices should arise from necessity and desperation, not callousness.

Mrs. Alma MacNeil is the dial painters’ factory supervisor. Strict, practical and invested in obedience, quotas and procedure, she passes the company’s instructions along without questioning them. She should not be played as a simple villain; she is another working woman attempting to preserve her own position within the system.

Additional roles include:

• Clerk: an overworked health-department employee whose bureaucratic detachment shifts when she realizes Irene has died.

• Elderly Widow: an earnest correspondent offering the women unsolicited advice.

This is an especially varied character track requiring strong comedy, grounded dramatic work and unmistakable transformations.

Track 5 — Diane Roeder/Curie Track (Female)

Roles: Diane Roeder, Madame Curie, Customer and Board Member #3

Diane Roeder is Arthur Roeder’s wife. Intelligent, compassionate and socially active, she has long believed that her husband is fundamentally a good man. As the scandal develops, she must reconcile the person she loves with mounting evidence of his company’s actions. She is not passive or naïve; she asks difficult questions, although the answers threaten the foundation of her marriage.

The role requires maturity, warmth, subtlety and the ability to communicate suspicion, disappointment and loyalty without overstating them.

Madame Curie appears first as an internationally celebrated scientist during a theatrical public event and later as a figure in Grace’s dream. In the public scene, she represents the era’s tremendous faith in radium and scientific advancement. In the dream, she becomes darker, stranger and more symbolic. The role requires presence, heightened comedy and the ability to shift into surrealism.

Additional roles include:

• Customer: a member of the public commenting on the lawsuit.

• Board Member #3: a male corporate board member focused on the company’s survival.

Track 6 — Lee/Scientists and Public (Male)

Roles: C.B. “Charlie” Lee, Dr. Cecil Drinker, William J.A. Bailey, Frederick Flinn, Male Shopper, Court and Lovesick Cowboy

C.B. “Charlie” Lee is the company’s vice president and later its president. A pragmatic businessman, Lee is primarily concerned with profit, investment, public image and continued operation. He is less troubled by guilt than Roeder and increasingly becomes the harder, more ruthless voice of the company. He should be persuasive and grounded rather than melodramatically sinister.

This track also includes three very different scientific or pseudo-scientific figures:

• Dr. Cecil Drinker: a credible Harvard industrial hygienist whose investigation identifies radium as the likely source of the workers’ illnesses.

• William J.A. Bailey: the flamboyant entrepreneur who manufactures and enthusiastically promotes Radithor.

• Frederick Flinn, Ph.D.: a charming company-funded physiologist who presents himself to Grace as a medical authority and dismisses her symptoms.

Additional roles include:

• Male Shopper: a heightened public commentator.

• Court: the judge presiding over the legal proceeding.

• Lovesick Cowboy: an unintentionally comic admirer who writes to one of the women.

This track calls for an actor with exceptional range, authority and comic versatility.

Track 7— Tom/Reporter/Advocate (Male)

Roles: Tom Kreider, Reporter Jack Youngwood, Raymond Berry and Dr. Joseph Knef

Tom Kreider is Grace’s longtime boyfriend and fiancé. Affectionate, teasing and hardworking, Tom wants an ordinary future with Grace: marriage, a home and children. He struggles to accept that their lives may never return to normal. His optimism gradually becomes denial, and his wish to protect Grace conflicts with her determination to continue fighting.

The actor must bring warmth, humor, romantic chemistry, frustration and grief to the role.

Jack Youngwood, Reporter, works for the Newark Ledger and serves as a narrator and commentator throughout the play. He requires excellent diction, direct audience engagement and strong presentational instincts.

Raymond Berry is the dial painters’ attorney. Principled and personally affected by the women’s suffering, he has limited resources but refuses to be intimidated by the company’s legal team. He requires sincerity, intelligence and forceful courtroom presence.

Dr. Joseph Knef is a neighborhood dentist who recognizes the unusual deterioration of the women’s jaws but later attempts to profit from his knowledge. The role combines blunt humor, medical authority, opportunism and moral ugliness.

The actor must create four immediately distinguishable men with very different social positions and ethical frameworks.

Track 8— Markley/Von Sochocky (Male)

Roles: Edward Markley, Dr. Von Sochocky, Dr. Harrison Martland, Store Owner and Venecine Salesman

Edward Markley is the company’s attorney. Polished, strategic, patient and skilled at manipulating legal procedure, he treats the women’s suffering as a problem to be managed through delay, technicalities and carefully worded settlements. His courtesy should make him more unsettling, not less.

Dr. Sabin Von Sochocky is the founder of the company and inventor of the luminous paint. An immigrant scientist with an eccentric manner, he is proud of his discovery but increasingly haunted by its consequences. His later confrontation with Roeder reveals regret, anger, illness and moral complexity.

Dr. Harrison Martland is the Essex County medical examiner whose research provides crucial evidence connecting the women’s illnesses to radium. He is cautious, methodical and scientifically credible.

Additional roles include:

• Store Owner: a skeptical member of the public who dismisses the women’s claims.

• Venecine Salesman: an exuberant promoter attempting to exploit their publicity.

This track requires precision, strong character work and the ability to move between restrained authority and broad presentational comedy.

Track 8— Arthur Roeder (Male)

Roles: Arthur Roeder

The company president and the play’s other central figure. Roeder is thirty-four at the beginning of the story and appears as an older man in the final sequence.

Intelligent, ambitious, personable and initially convinced that his work benefits society, Roeder is neither a conventional monster nor an innocent bystander. As evidence mounts, he repeatedly chooses the company’s survival over the safety of its workers. At the same time, he constructs increasingly elaborate explanations that allow him to believe he remains a decent man.

The actor must portray charm, authority, ambition, paternalism, defensiveness, fear, guilt, self-deception and genuine moral conflict. His journey should not excuse his choices, but it should reveal how a man capable of affection and conscience continues making devastating decisions.

This is a major dramatic role requiring substantial emotional range, commanding presence and the ability to age convincingly.

SIDES CAN BE FOUND HERE

Callback materials will be linked here one week prior to callbacks.