Left to right: Jen Buder, Grant Buckler, Nicole Benishek, Sharon Hunter, Lloyd Balme, Anton Gibson, Kimberly Dolan, Zoe Compson, Adele Mitchell, Michelle Freedman, Kieran Chenier, Lisa Murphy

These Shining Lives

L-R: Jen Buder, Kimberly Dolan, Nicole Benishek, Sharon Hunter

Catherine is starting a new job. She's nervous, but excited too about earning her own money, which will help supplement her husband Tom's construction job as they raise their two young children. At work, she meets Frances, Charlotte and Pearl—coworkers who will quickly become close friends.

But there is more to the job Catherine loves than she realizes. Her job is to paint watch and clock dials with paint that contains radium.

These Shining Lives chronicles the strength and determination of women considered expendable in their day, exploring their true story of continued resonance. Catherine and her friends are dying, it's true; but theirs is s story of survival in its most transcendent sense.

These Shining Lives premiered at Baltimore Center Stage in April 2008 and was a finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Award and the Weissberger Award in 2005.

Melanie Marnich

Born in Duluth, Minn., Melanie Marnich studied journalism at the University of Minnesota and later obtained her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in playwriting at the University of California at San Diego. Her plays include Quake, Blur, Tallgrass Gothic, These Shining Lives, Calling All, Beautiful Again, The Sparrow Project and A Sleeping Country.

Two of her plays, Quake and Tallgrass Gothic, have premiered at the Actors Theatre of Louisville’s Humana Festival of New American Plays. Her plays have been produced or developed at New York’s Public Theater, Steppenwolf Theatre, London’s Royal Court Theatre, the Guthrie Theater, Arena Stage, Portland Center Stage and Denver Center for the Arts. She lives in Los Angeles.

We would like to acknowledge that this production takes place on the traditional lands of the Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabe peoples. We honour and give thanks to the land, its inhabitants and their enduring cultures.

Admission $20 (plus Grand Theatre surcharge). Tickets available through Kingston Grand Box Office, 613-530-2050 and online, until 2 p.m. on day of performance, and at the door (cash, debit, Visa, MasterCard, Apple Pay or Android Pay) on performance nights when available. Seniors and members $16 at the door on Thursdays only. Children and students $10.

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