Rachel’s Words

Sunday, March 16, 2008 is the fifth anniversary of Rachel Corrie’s death. We mark the day with grief as people in Gaza struggle to survive. The international siege has left them without basic needs such as fuel, electricity, and potable water, and the recent Israeli military invasion killed 120 people – over 70 civilians and children. (Read more here.)

For people planning events, The U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation has put together an excellent vigil guide. Also, Rachel’s emails from Gaza can be found, in many languages, on our website. We hope that the anniversary will be used as a day to commemorate Rachel Corrie and and keep Gaza in the news. We encourage people to continue reading Rachel’s emails in public gatherings large or small, on March 16th and beyond.

In the last 5 years, Rachel’s Corrie’s voice has broken through barriers to reach a widening audience. Craig and Cindy Corrie are in Haifa. On March 16 they will attend the opening performance of the play My Name is Rachel Corrie in Arabic at the Al-Midan Theatre. Friends from the Royal Court Theatre, which originally premiered the play, are joining them. After Haifa, the play will travel to Nazareth, Jaffa and Ramallah. The play, whose cancellation in New York launched our own initiative, is now being produced in theaters all over the U.S. and internationally.

The play that was banned in New York City, Miami, and Toronto!

MY NAME IS RACHEL CORRIE
Compiled by Katherine Viner and Alan Rickman
Directed by Tim Klein
Starring Katie White as Rachel Corrie
For more info visit: www.subversivetheatre.org

What?
MY NAME IS RACHEL CORRIE is a one-woman play produced in collaboration between Subversive Theatre and the Buffalo United Artists’ Theatre.

Who?
This production is directed by Tim Klein and stars Subversive Theatre’s own Katie White as Rachel Corrie.

Where?
All shows are at the Main Street Cabaret at 672 Main Street (in the same building as Alleyway Theatre) in between Studio Arena and Shea’s.

When?
MY NAME IS RACHEL CORRIE plays Fridays and Saturdays at 8pm March 7-29. Doors open at 7:30pm.

How Much?
Tickets are $22.00 general admission or $15.00 for students and seniors. To make a reservation, call the Buffalo United Artists Theatre’s Box Office at 886-9239.

A Painfully True Story…
MY NAME IS RACHEL CORRIE is a one-woman play compiled entirely from the journal entries and e-mails of Rachel Corrie — the 23 year-old peace activist from Olympia, Washington who died after being run over by an Israeli Bulldozer while defending a Palestinian home in the Gaza Strip on March 16, 2003.

She was a girl from small-town America with dreams of being a poet or a dancer. So how, at just 23, did Rachel Corrie become a Palestinian martyr? Five years on, her diaries are being released.

Louise France | The Observer, Sunday March 2 2008

Peace activist Rachel Corrie is shown at the Burning Man festival in a photo from September 2002, in Black Rock City, Nevada. Photograph: Denny Sternstein/AP

It is impossible to underestimate quite how much life for Rachel Corrie’s family has changed since she was killed by an Israeli army Caterpillar D9 bulldozer in the Gaza Strip on 16 March 2003. As Rachel’s elder sister Sarah puts it: ‘What was normal doesn’t exist for us now.’

‘After Rachel was killed.’

When I meet the Corries, it swiftly becomes clear that there is a great deal they want to speak out about, but it is these four words, heavy with loss, that they have repeated most over the past five years.