Tour precedes high school production of The Royal Worcester Corset Company' ENTERTAINMENT

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1 Wednesday, March 14, 2012 Tour precedes high school production of The Royal Worcester Corset Company' ENTERTAINMENT Students from Notre Dame Academy and St. John's High School walk through Union Station on a Preservation Worcester tour of historic Worcester sites Friday in preparation for the upcoming musical production The Royal Worcester Corset Company. (T&G Staff/PAUL KAPTEYN) Richard Duckett TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF

2 Students, teachers and tour guides walk along Grand Street in Worcester, past the former Royal Worcester Corset Company factory, which is now apartments. (T&G Staff/PAUL KAPTEYN) The Royal Worcester Corset Company When: 8 p.m. Thursday, Friday and Saturday; 2 p.m. Sunday Where: Notre Dame Academy, 425 Salisbury St., Worcester How much: $15; $10 children under 14. The field trip was helping their roles fit. Cast members of the upcoming production of the musical The Royal Worcester Corset Company at Notre Dame Academy boarded a school bus Friday afternoon for a tour of some of the Worcester locations that are featured in the show. The first stop was at the Royal Worcester Apartments, 45 Grand St. Back in 1910 the striking large structure was the Royal Worcester Corset Company, a thriving place that held up Worcester's claim to be the largest corset manufacturing city in the world, and employing more than 2,000 women, the largest number for a company in the country. Jennie Ballou, the character Notre Dame Academy junior Jackie Weiler is playing in the show, most likely worked there. It's a fact that a Jennie Ballou lived right next to the factory on Grand

3 Street. Virginia Byrne and Kallin Johnson, the show's creators, got the name from a 1910 Worcester street directory. The musical imagines a love story between Jennie Ballou, a French- Canadian girl who works for the Royal Worcester Corset Company, and Per Larson, a Swedish immigrant working at Norton Co. Byrne and Johnson found a Per Larson on Upsala Street in the same 1910 directory. On Friday, imagination was meeting the reality of bricks and concrete. I think it was amazing. Exhilarating almost, Weiler, 16, of Northboro said about seeing the building at 45 Grand St. I think it helped me figure out my character, seeing the factory so I could put myself in that place. It adds another whole dimension, agreed Daniel Musgrove, 18, a senior at St. John's High School in Shrewsbury who is playing Per Larson. It's really different to see the actual places where this show takes place. It gives it a much greater sense of reality. I got a visual depiction of who my character was being Swedish, being with a girl who was French. And in danger of being ostracized by friends and family as a result. A French-Canadian Catholic girl going out with a Swedish-American Lutheran boy was not something either family would likely accept in Worcester circa 1910, and it gives the musical another dimension of realism as well as drama. Byrne and Johnson, who both teach at Notre Dame Academy, wrote The Royal Worcester Corset Company about 20 years ago, and it was first staged in 1993 by the former New England Theatre Company at Anna Maria College in Paxton. Besides the Ballou-Larson romance, the musical offers a look at the workings of the corset company and provides some snapshots that try to convey what it was like to live in Worcester in In 2006 the musical was revived for a production that would be the first to be staged in the George F. and Sybil H. Fuller Auditorium at the new Worcester Technical High School. The production, which had an adult and student cast, came about at the suggestion of Edwin B. Ted Coghlin Jr. (of Coghlin Electrical Contractors and an active member of Worcester Technical High School's advisory boards), who had seen the original 1993 production and liked and remembered it. The latest rendition of The Royal Worcester Corset Company will be performed at Notre Dame Academy at 8 p.m. Thursday, Friday and Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday and has a cast of students from Notre Dame Academy and St. John's. Byrne and Johnson are again co-directors. Both were on board for Friday's bus ride, which had been preceded at Notre Dame Academy by an interesting talk about corsets and the corset company from Marilyn Polito, a docent for Preservation Worcester, Inc.

4 The corset went through various fashion design trends from accenting an hourglass figure to an S-shape, Polito noted, although the comfort of the wearer wasn't always a top consideration. And fashion could be expensive. A top-of-the-line Bon-Ton Corset would cost about $366 in today's money. In 1910 Worcester had six corset factories. The Royal Worcester Corset Company was founded by David Hale Fanning, considered an enlightened entrepreneur who put people over profits. However, Polito noted that wages for female workers in America were generally 40 percent of their male counterparts. Nevertheless, the Royal Worcester Corset Company wasn't just row after row of sewing machines. There was a theater, dining hall, library and infirmary. It was quite a wonderful neighborhood, Polito said. She put on a screen a famous photo of smiling female workers posing for a photograph in the courtyard outside the front of the factory building. However, times, business and fashion change, and the factory closed in But Preservation Worcester likes the fact that the factory is now an apartment complex. Instead of tearing them down, new uses can be found for them, Polito said. The female cast members for The Royal Worcester Corset Company had already had an education of sorts in corsets. Every single female in the show is wearing a corset, Byrne said. Jackie Weiler couldn't see herself wearing one on a daily basis like Jennie Ballou. Nope. Still, putting one on for the show and the Preservation Worcester presentation helped me understand a lot more what they had to go through and what the corsets were like, she said. Byrne called the talk and bus tour a theatrical and historical experience. The talkative bus trundled along Park Avenue from Salisbury Street, then took a left down Maywood Street, crossing onto Main Street and taking a right to go down Grand Street, where the Royal Worcester Apartments suddenly loomed. Byrne said she's accompanied adult cast members of the show on similar tours in the past, and the response was polite, but The students, in contrast, were a good deal more spirited and enthusiastic, she said. There were hugs as they took in the sight of the Royal Worcester Apartments, and cast members posed in front of the building for a photograph similar to the famous one of yore. Some students had never been in this part of the city before and/or had never seen the Grand Street building. I really didn't know what to make of it. It was really interesting, said Musgrove. In history class you don't really learn about the history of Worcester. Polito pointed out the unique three-decker houses in the neighborhood. As the group walked along Illinois Street near Grand Street they passed the former Holy Name of Jesus Church (now Belmont A.M.E. Zion Church). This was a French-Canadian parish, Polito said. Jennie Ballou

5 may well have attended the church they were looking at. At Union Station, where a scene in the musical also takes place, students again alighted from the bus to take a look. For Notre Dame Academy junior Olivia Goliger, 17, of Marlboro, this was her first look at the station, just as she had just seen the former factory for the first time. In the musical, she plays an older Jennie Ballou looking back to reflect on incidents in her life. It was great to see everything I talk about in the show. It helps me in imagining, Goliger said.