How the U.S. government systematically exposed millions of Americans to harmful radioactive fallout through nuclear testing during the 1950's is a story still hardly known to most people. And it's simply unfathomable.

On November 11th, the Plan-B Theatre Company performed a special reading of Mary Dickson's "Exposed," originally a play about "downwinders" living in Utah during and years after the tests. The Plan-B Theatre Company performed for a packed house here in The Leonardo's 3rd-floor auditorium.

While the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, publicly called the tests harmless, residents "downwind" of the testing later developed serious illnesses including lupus, thyroid cancer, and even severe birth defects passed on to their children. Even now it is still impossible to determine how many people were exposed. The government allowed for few studies.

I was particularly shocked to realize how many people living in Salt Lake City were likely exposed during those years. Common belief about "downwinders" has always been that they were poor farmers and ranchers living in southern Utah or Arizona. But the play, which uses actual interviews, letters and speeches, revealed how much more widespread the fallout was. Also disturbing was how the performance evoked the calls to reinitiate nuclear testing by the last U.S. administration. Because of this, Dickson said, it was very important now to remember these tests, since we live in the "United States of Amnesia."

(PHOTO: From a public government archive. A few minutes after an atomic blast, May 5, 1955, Nevada Test Site.)



Dickson's play premiered in October 2007 and was widely acclaimed by local and national critics. Currently the play has been transformed to a reading, read by seven cast members on stage. The Reading Tour has also traveled to Ogden, Logan, St. George, and Moab.

After the performance audience members were invited to add names to a growing list, placed on a table in the lobby, of other downwinder victims.