YSU play captured essence of ethnic life in steel communities

YSU play captured essence of ethnic life in steel communities

The YSU Theater Department presented the play “Out of this Furnace” last weekend. YSU drama students gave vivid, memorable portrayals of the immigrants who worked under harsh, often dangerous conditions to make steel in western Pesnnsylvania. Coming to America at the turn of the 20th century with little money and dreams of working hard for a better life, many found only a hard scrabble existence laboring night and day in the steel mills of Pennsylvania and Ohio.

While the owners like Carnegie used their philanthropy to stamp their names on edifices in Pittsburgh and other towns, the men who were mangled or died in the steel-making process before the rise of the unions did not even get a footnote in the history books. This play adapted by Andy Wolk serves as a tribute to their lives and the families who survived despite repeated hardship and heartache.

The wait for the large crowd that attended Saturday night’s performance was worthwhile. We watched the lives of a Rusyn and Slovak family unfold as narrated by a young steelworker whose father died in the steel mill on his 11th birthday. This play did not speak to just one ethnic group but to every family in the area who can remember their father’s, grandfather’s, and uncle’s stories of working in the heat and hearth’s of the local steel industry.

While the play was just here for one weekend, I hope the students will find a venue to reprise their roles so anyone who missed this well-acted drama can attend.

Margaret R. Floyd, Youngstown