KANSAS CITY GIRLS
FOR PICKLE FACTORY.
Plant Will Be Only Stage Affair,
But Beauties Will Handle
Real Pickles.
"Working in a pickle factory" will no longer be a joke with a score of pretty young women from various walks of life in Kansas City who will hold forth at the Orpheum theater this week as employes of a pickle factory in Helen Grantley's sketch, "The Agitator," the top liner on the bill. They will handle real pickles and after a week's training and rehearsals and their participation in the show this week it is predicted they will have no difficulty in getting work as experts in the business, should they so desire.
The sketch is based in part on the female suffrage movement. The scene in which the young women work is one in which Miss Grantley makes her plea for a strike. Of course the girls follow their leader, the strike is called and after the usual trials and tribulations of strikers, is won. The sketch created somewhat of a sensation in New York, the play there being made more realistic by the fact that the girls who counterfeited the pickle trimmers were really striking shirt waist makers.
Miss Grantley came here with her company a week ago ahead of her billing so that she might rehearse the score of young women supers, some of whom will be carried with the company at the close of the week.
An advertisement brought half a hundred replies and out of this number Miss Grantley selected a score of girls. Among those selected were stenographers, two high school girls who were "just dying" to go on the stage even if they had to work in a "pickle factory," a telephone girl who had often wished that she might appear behind the footlights, three art students who wanted the work for the "atmosphere," later to be transferred to canvas, and a couple of girls who had not worked anywhere, but who sought this as a stepping stone to the stage.
It was an ungainly and awkward squad, as they lined up for the first rehearsal. Only one of the girls had ever been back of the scenes, and she was fairly lionized by the others. The turn was not a difficult one, and after the story of the play was told, the girls quickly appreciated the points which it was desired to emphasize.
"A trained chorus direct from New York City could not have done any better," declared Miss Grantley last evening. "They still have another rehearsal, but they are letter perfect now and I am sure that some of them will come with me when I leave the city."
