Rivets!

May 29 through June 7, 2008

Two generations ago, minimum wage was 30¢ cents an hour, gas cost 19¢ a gallon and a new home in Walnut Creek could be purchased for under $4,000.

Hard to believe for many Bay Area residents, says director Clay David who is staging Rivets!, a new musical set in the Richmond Shipyards during WW II. Rivets!, with book and lyrics by Kathryn G. McCarty and a musical score by Mitchell Covington, will run through June 7.

“The 1940’s were the time of Rosie the Riveter – the beginning of monumental transformations between both sexes and races” said McCarty, citing changes brought about by President Roosevelt’s Executive Order 8802. “At that time in our history, Blacks and Whites were assigned separate drinking fountains and interracial relationships were a felony. As a result of pressure from the African American Porter’s Union, President Roosevelt banned discrimination in War Production industries and Government because of race, creed, color, or national origin. These men changed the world."

With most of the Country’s men at war, women entered the work force for the first time in history.

“This is the story of our parents, our grandparents,” said McCarty, who spent 10 years researching the development of the Bay Area during this period. “What I repeatedly ran into were stories of ordinary men and women, most of them unskilled and uneducated, doing extraordinary work which changed our entire history. Had the United States not stood together for one goal, we certainly would have lost WW 2.”

From 1941-1945 over 500,000 people migrated to the Bay Area to find work in the Defense Boom. They found jobs in the Shipyards and Defense Industries throughout the Bay Area. The Kaiser Shipyards serve as backdrop for Rivets!.

“This is the story of the Home Front soldiers, the men and women of World War II,” said David. “These Rosie the Riveters influenced the development of the entire Bay Area; over 120,000 people migrated to the Richmond area in search of war production work.”

“I've mixed historical information in with fictitious story lines and characters,” explains McCarty, who says Rivets! explores changing roles of both White and African American men and women.

Rivets!, the third work by McCarty that David has directed, is the first new work she’s had produced since last Fall’s publication of her book “Defining Form & Other Plays.” Rivets! met rave reviews from critics and audiences in an earlier production this year at Contra Costa College.

“We were very pleased with the response from the first production,” David said, adding that while enjoying the response from critics “The most heartfelt review came from an original Rosie who told us that she felt that she’d been ‘transported back in time.’ You can’t ask for more.”

Prices:
$25:  Regular
$20:  Senior and Youth
$15:  Child

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