Village Voice: Say My Name, Who’s afraid of Rachel Corrie?
Artists clamor for play to be seen
by Alexis Sottile
Publsihed in The Village Voice
New York stage artists are rushing in to fill the void left by the aborted U.S. debut of My Name Is Rachel Corrie. But what’s lost in the controversy regarding the halted New York Theater Workshop production is the humanity of the play itself, as well as the closeness of the local theater community. “This has been like a family event,” says actress Kathleen Chalfant, “and we’re trying to see what’s going on in our family.”
The one-woman show tells the story of a 23-year-old activist from Olympia, Washington, who traveled to Gaza in early 2003. Less than two months later, she was crushed to death by an Israeli army bulldozer as she tried to block its path toward a Palestinian home. Edited by actor Alan Rickman and Guardian journalist Katherine Viner, the single act is made up of Corrie’s journal entries and e-mail correspondence. The first half poetically details her college life (run-ins with an ex-boyfriend, second thoughts about painting her ceiling red). In the second half, the destruction she witnesses in Gaza as an international observer of potential human rights violations of Palestinians challenges her fundamental beliefs about human nature. “It hurts me, again, like it has hurt me in the past, to witness how awful we can allow the world to be,” she writes. “It is my own selfishness and will to optimism that wants to believe that even people with a great deal of privilege don’t just idly sit by and watch.”
A single line of text announces her death, followed by a video of a 10-year-old Corrie delivering a speech at a student conference. “I am here for other children. I am here because I care,” she states. “My dream is to stop hunger by the year 2000.”
After two sold-out runs at London’s Royal Court, the play was moving toward a March 22 opening at NYTW when its artistic director, James C. Nicola, pulled the plug February 28. All aspects of how far along the production agreement was, and whether NYTW’s decision constituted a delay until next season, an indefinite postponement, a cancellation, or as some contend, an act of censorship, are hotly disputed by both companies. The Royal Court owns the rights to the play and ultimately determines where it will be seen next.
According to The New York Times, Nicola withdrew the production after “polling local Jewish religious and community leaders,” an idea that has provoked great dismay from Jews and non-Jews alike. “The Workshop speaks with many members of the community before producing,” says NYTW publicist Richard Kornberg, adding that this process is more routine than has been suggested, but that no actual polling took place. The theater stands by its assertion that what it wanted, in fact, was merely more time.
An open letter posted on [petitiononline.com] asking Nicola to make good on his commitment garnered more than 350 signatures in three days—including those of Gloria Steinem and
Vagina Monologues playwright Eve Ensler. “Dear Jim, my old friend,” writes a signatory, “I would welcome talking to you about this.”
In the meantime, theater artists and human rights activists are planning events to commemorate the anniversary of Corrie’s death March 16, including a global reading of her words, modeled on The Lysistrata Project. The schedule below should comfort those who worry that the New York theater community would ever sit idly by anything.
