The Triangle Factory Fire Project
by Christopher Piehler, Scott Alan Evans

Saturday, March 25, 1911. 4:45 P.M.

In the Triangle Waist Factory off downtown Manhattan’s Washington Square – where 500 immigrant workers from Poland, Russia and Italy toil 14-hour days making lady’s dresses – a cigarette is tossed into a bin of fabric scraps.

Despite desperate efforts, flames sweep through the eighth, ninth and tenth floors.

Panic-stricken workers run in all directions.

On the ninth floor, some make it to the fire escape, only to have it collapse beneath their weight.

Others run to the exit door but find it locked – many, including the soon-to-be-married Margaret Schwartz, die with their hands on the doorknob.

Dozens leap from the windows to their deaths, shocking the crowd of onlookers gathered below.

And some, through bravery or sheer luck, make it out alive.

In the space of 28 minutes, the fire is under control, but 146 people, mainly young immigrant girls, have died.

The Triangle Factory Fire Project uses eyewitness accounts, court transcripts and other archival material to create a dramatic moment-by-moment account of this historic fire and the social upheaval that followed.

It culminates in the manslaughter trial of the owners, Isaac Harris and Max Blanck, whose shocking acquittal inspires new outrage across New York and the entire country, the repercussions of which shaped social, political and economic policies for decades to come.

By using real words spoken by real people, from Ukrainian seamstresses to millionaire Fifth Avenue socialites, this play paints a heartbreakingly clear picture of a disastrous day in American history and explores the human toll such a tragedy takes on us all.