Based on the true story of the Triangle Factory fire of 1911, The Triangle follows the lives of several people from the Uprising of 20,000 to the beginning of the New Deal. The garment industry is booming and the most powerful owners in New York run the Triangle. When the workers strike for better conditions, it ignites one of the most fractious periods in labor history, culminating in the tragic factory fire that cost the lives of over 144 people.

SYNOPSIS:

Until the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the worst workplace disaster in the history of the United States took place at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory on March 25, 1911. On that day, 144 workers - the vast majority of them immigrant women - were burned alive or jumped ten stories to their deaths on the streets of New York City... in a fire that could have been prevented. The result was a tidal wave of reform that marked the beginning of the New Deal and redefined what it meant to be a human being in America.

The Triangle is the true story of the workers, owners, union leaders, and reformers whose lives intersected on that fateful day. With winter approaching, RACHEL and EVA LANSNER fight over whether or not to risk their family’s livelihood by joining one of the fledgling labor unions. Meanwhile, KALMAN DOWNIC, a young Russian Jew with ambitions of staking his own claim to the American dream, breaks from tradition by courting VINCENZA PINELLO, a bold Italian who risks her life by fleeing the fiance her family has chosen for her. Looming over them is ISAAC HARRIS and MAX BLANCK, the owners of the most powerful garment factory in America whose own journey to affluence began in poverty a generation earlier. Opposing the Triangle owners are the women of Local 25, a small garment-makers’ union led by ROSE SCHNEIDERMAN, whose intellect will turn a five dollar war chest into the Uprising of 20,000, one of the most famous labor strikes in U.S. history. And in the state’s capital, a naive do-gooder named FRANCES PERKINS struggles against the established power of Tammany Hall. But when the violent strike escalates to its historic climax, workers and owners must work together just to survive.

THE TRIANGLE