“My Name is Rachel Corrie” comes to Madison
by Barbara Olson
“My Name is Rachel Corrie,” a play that has become a flash point for opposing feelings about the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land, will be performed in Madison this month.
On March 16, 2003, a 23-year-old American peace activist from Olympia, Wash., was crushed to death by an Israeli Army bulldozer in Rafah, a Palestinian town on the border between Egypt and the Gaza Strip. Rachel Corrie was a volunteer with the International Solidarity Movement, a group of Palestinians and “internationals” who tried to use nonviolence in the mold of Mahatma Gandhi and the U.S. civil rights movement to stop human rights abuses by the Israeli army in occupied Palestine. She was trying to prevent the demolition of a Palestinian pharmacist’s home when she was killed. Several eyewitnesses called her death a deliberate act of murder; the Israeli government insists that it was a tragic accident and blames Corrie for her own death. The U.S. government has refused to investigate.
Soon after Corrie’s death, many of her e-mails from Gaza to her family were published in the British newspaper The Guardian. They caught the eye of British actor Alan Rickman, best known in the U.S. as Harry Potter’s Professor Snape. Rickman obtained more of Corrie’s writings, beginning at age 10 and continuing through her teens to college and a job at a mental health center in her hometown. Rickman and Katherine Viner, a journalist with The Guardian, wove these writings into a one-woman play: “My Name is Rachel Corrie.”
“In developing this piece of theater, we wanted to uncover the young woman behind the political symbol, beyond her death,” Viner said.
“We were never going to paint Rachel as a saint or sentimentalize her, but we also needed to face the fact that she’d been demonized,” Rickman said. “We wanted to present a balanced portrait.”
“My Name is Rachel Corrie” premiered at the Royal Court Theater in London in spring 2005 to sell-out houses and rave reviews. The U.S. premiere at the New York Theatre Workshop was suddenly “unscheduled,” however, due to outside pressure, which generated cries of censorship. The London production subsequently had a successful off-Broadway run at the Minetta Lane Theater in New York.
Since then, more than a dozen additional productions have been or will be mounted in Canada and the U.S. On March 16, 2008, the fifth anniversary of Corrie’s death, the play will open in Haifa, Israel, in its first Arabic language performance. There are plans to tour in several other cities in Israel and the West Bank of Palestine as well.
The Madison production of the play will open on Friday, March 7, at 7:30 p.m. at the Orpheum Theatre, 216 State St. Rachel’s parents, Craig and Cindy Corrie, will attend and lead the post-show discussion. They will also be the featured guests at a fundraising fish fry dinner at the Orpheum Lobby Restaurant beginning at 5:30 p.m. Net proceeds will benefit the Rachel Corrie Youth Center in Rafah.
The play will be performed again on Saturday, March 8, also at 7:30 p.m. at the Orpheum. Tickets for these two performances are $5. There will also be a large, free photo exhibit, “Palestine in Focus,” in the Orpheum lobby during regular business hours.
On Friday and Saturday, March 14 and 15, the play will move to the Overture Center for the Arts, 201 State St.; shows will begin at 7:30 p.m. A donation is requested, but not required, for admission. Tickets for all shows will be available at the Orpheum Theatre box office.
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