THE YARN

FACTORY GIRLS tells the story of best friends Sarah Bagley and Harriet Farley, factory operatives in Lowell, Massachusetts in 1844. High wages and a chance to improve their family’s lives draws Yankee farm girls to the “City of Spindles” by the thousands. Even after laboring for up to fourteen hours a day, the girls write and publish their own company-sponsored publication, The Lowell Offering, which becomes a worldwide literary phenomenon. When working conditions deteriorate due to competition and economic hardship, Sarah speaks out against the corporation; Harriet, as editor of the Offering, refuses to sacrifice the gains the women have made. The resulting battle rips their friendship apart and alters the course of the American worker.

THE THREADS

Most of the concepts and many of the lyrics in FACTORY GIRLS derive from The Lowell Offering and The Voice of Industry, periodicals written by women working in the textile mills in the early 1840s. Though these words are over 150 years old, they ring with passion, beauty, and rebellion. Their writings evoke a tumultuous young America, and rock, funk, and folk music best suits their story. FACTORY GIRLS reflects the shared journey of these brave American women from farm to factory, from country to city, from wood to steel.

THE QUILT

FACTORY GIRLS was conceived at NYU-Tisch’s Graduate Musical Theater Writing Program, and received its first equity reading on April 28th, 2008. The show received its first full production at Lesley University in Cambridge, MA from Nov. 11- 14, 2008. The American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, CA hosted a two-week workshop in conjunction with their MFA and Young Conservatory programs under director Craig Slaightin December of 2008. The show then spent two more weeks at Goodspeed Opera House in East Haddam, CT as part of their Festival of New Artists with the help of the Hartt School of Music from the University of Hartford. In June 2009, concerts featuring music from the show were held at ArsNova and Joe’s Pub in New York. Our production here at NAMT represents a condensed 45- minute version of the first act of the show.

WHY LOWELL?

The conflicts that arose during the 1840s at the Lowell Mills are the same conflicts that divide our country today: workers’ rights, minority and majority privilege, institutional power, and the idea of labor as either a possibility-- or a prison. The giant corporation, an entity new and uncertain in Lowell’s time, now dominates the global financial system. Today, as in the 1840s, these large, impersonal corporations supplant small businesses, with little thought given to what is morally best for the people who turn the gears of the machine. For these reasons, we feel the voice of the FACTORY GIRLS of Lowell Mills demands to be heard today.