With more than 350 productions last year, RADIUM GIRLS is among the 20 most produced plays in the U.S., according to Playbill Magazine.
Written by D.W. Gregory and published by Dramatic Publishing, Radium Girls has been a steady favorite among U.S. high schools, colleges, and community theaters for more than ten years.
“This is a terrific way to begin the new year,” Gregory said when Playbill’s list was announced in January.
“When I wrote the play originally, for Playwrights Theater of New Jersey, I had no idea it would have such a long afterlife in the amateur market. But it seems the play continues to resonate so many years later.”
Radium Girls is based on the true story of women poisoned on the job in a New Jersey watch dial manufacturing plant of the 1920s. The play offers a wry, unflinching look at the peculiarly American obsessions with health, wealth, and the commercialization of science.
Since publication, Radium Girls has received nearly 3,000 productions throughout the U.S. and abroad. The play has been stage multiple times in Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand, and has received productions in Germany, China, Singapore, and India. In 2024, King’s Company took its production of Radium Girls to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
Playbill compiled the 2025 list by drawing on data from hundreds of schools and community theatres that used Playbill’s program-building service, PlayBilder, last year. Here is the full list:
- A Midsummer Night’s Dream
- Almost, Maine
- Little Women
- The Outsiders
- Peter and the Starcatcher
- The Importance of Being Earnest
- The Play That Goes Wrong
- Romeo and Juliet
- Radium Girls
- Our Town
- Twelfth Night
- Puffs
- Macbeth
- The Crucible
- Arsenic and Old Lace
- Steel Magnolias
- 12 Angry Jurors
- The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
- She Kills Monsters
- (tie) Trap and Much Ado About Nothing
For more than seven years in a row, Radium Girls has also been among the ten most produced plays in U.S. high schools, according to the Educational Theater Association. A one-act version, cuttable for competition, is also a popular choice among U.S. high schools. In 2025, the one-act received 34 productions.