Trouble Puppet Theater Company presents the world premiere of UNDARK: A Radioactive Puppet Play, telling the true story of the “radium girls” who worked in American factories in the late 1910s and early ‘20s.

Using its signature tabletop puppets as well as shadow puppetry, Trouble Puppet adds to its list of historical and labor-themed plays with this tale of female workers manufacturing luminous dials and instruments using the newly discovered natural wonder: radium.

Featuring an original score by theremin virtuosa Aileen Adler, the production mixes history with horror and reveals the macabre workings of capitalism. Disturbing and funny - or disturbingly funny - it is also shockingly relevant. As American workers in the 21st century again turn to unions in a pitched battle between oligarchy and the rights of citizens, Trouble Puppet looks back to one of the tragic episodes that led to the legal establishment of workers’ rights, in a struggle often led by women in the face of the added assault of misogyny and sex discrimination.

UNDARK: A Radioactive Puppet Play expresses Trouble Puppet’s continuing mission to use the art of puppetry to promote messages of social and economic justice. The play is produced with the support of The VORTEX and a grant from the Jim Henson Foundation.