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.

On March 16th, My Name is Rachel Corrie will open in Haifa in Arabic. The Corries will attend, along with some members of the Royal Court Theatre. After that it will travel to Nazareth, Ramallah, Jaffa, and Jerusalem.

In the last few months there have been performances of the play in Montreal, Vancouver, B.C., Edmonton and Calgary in Canada, and it is scheduled for Toronto later this spring. The Denver production has recently been in Lincoln and Omaha, Nebraska, and in Des Moines, Iowa, and is this weekend (February 23/24 ‘08) in Albuquerque, New Mexico.  

It has played in Lima, Athens, Stockholm and is headed to Germany, Spain, and more… there are plans for a performance in South Africa in 2009. The Corries will be stopping at performances in Madison, Wisconsin, and in Watertown, MA, on their way to Haifa. They have attended and done talkbacks, forums, etc. in Montreal, Vancouver, BC, and Des Moines, and did a taped phone message for Albuquerque.  (See review below.)

Actress embraces soul of the controversial Rachel Corrie

Adalah-NY Contact: justiceme@gmail.com

New York, NY, Dec. 10, 2007 – Oscar-winning actress and UNICEF goodwill ambassador Susan Sarandon has told a New York City activist group, Adalah-NY, that she is exploring Israeli diamond magnate Lev Leviev’s construction of Israeli settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and exploitation of marginalized communities in other parts of the world. Sarandon was responding to a letter from Adalah-NY requesting that she boycott Leviev. According to The New York Post, Sarandon attended the November 13 gala opening of Leviev’s Madison Avenue jewelry boutique LEVIEV New York, as Adalah-NY protested Leviev’s illegal activities outside.

The November 20th letter to Ms. Sarandon requested that she “refrain from making any purchases from Leviev-owned businesses” and “join our campaign and add [her] prominent voice to the call for a boycott of Leviev’s products.” The letter was endorsed by a number of groups and individuals, including Jews against the Occupation-NYC, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee – New York Chapter, and representatives from the West Bank Palestinian villages of Jayyous and Bil’in, two communities that Leviev is destroying by building settlements on their land. Following discussions between representatives of Ms. Sarandon and Adalah-NY, Susan Sarandon’s Assistant Mark Edlitz responded in a December 7 email to Adalah-NY that, “We received the information you sent. Ms. Sarandon will do her own exploration on this topic before drawing any conclusions.”

Olympia could become sister-city to Rafah on Gaza Strip

Associated Press

Last updated: Monday, April 16th, 2007 07:42:08 AM

OLYMPIA — The Olympia City Council will hold a public hearing Tuesday to consider a sister-city relationship with the Palestinian city of Rafah on the Gaza Strip.

The idea originated with Rachel Corrie, an Olympia activist who was killed in 2003 by an Israeli bulldozer.

The Olympia-Rafah Sister City Project has pursued the sister-city affiliation for four years. It would cost the city nothing. The organization would fund sister-city cultural and trade exchanges.

Opponents say choosing Rafah as a sister city amounts to taking the Palestinian side in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Corrie was The Evergreen State College student killed while standing in front of a Palestinian home to try to protect it from demolition.

Sunday, April 08, 2007

An Open Letter From THAW

An Open Letter Concerning the Recent Occurrences of Censorship

Last month a group of public high school students in Wilton Connecticut were told by their principal that they could not perform “Voices in Conflict,” a play they wrote based on the words of soldiers serving in Iraq because it could be construed as “anti-war” and might upset the audience. Principal Timothy Canty went on to suggest that the students didn’t “know enough” and didn’t have the right to speak about the war. The play includes the words of a 19 year old Wilton graduate recently killed in Iraq.

Within the same month at John Jay High School in Lewisboro, NY, three student actors were suspended because they dared to use the word ‘vagina’ in their reading of the critically acclaimed play, “The Vagina Monologues.” Their principal, Richard Leprine, said the girls were punished because they had “disobeyed orders” in speaking the word. “The Vagina Monologues” often draws criticism from conservative groups where it is performed.

Putting an American face on Palestinian aspirations

Seattle Times
April 4

My first reaction to the death of Rachel Corrie was to sigh at the damfoolishness of a 23-year-old from Olympia who would place her body in the way of the Israeli army. On March 16, 2003, in Rafah, Palestine, an Israeli soldier drove his bulldozer over her and crushed her.

I think of the Chinese man who blocked the column of tanks in Beijing on June 4, 1989. That man created an image and vanished, never leaving his face. Rachel left her face.

In “My Name Is Rachel Corrie,” now playing at the Seattle Repertory Theatre, actress Marya Sea Kaminski brings Rachel to life in a 90-minute monologue extracted solely from Rachel’s diary and e-mails. Here is The Evergreen State College idealist, who declares, “I am building the world myself and putting new hats on everybody.”

The 9/11 attacks have provided a focus to her fervor. She is drawn to the Palestinians. She imbibes Arabic. Feeling that she must join in, she goes to Gaza to witness the Israeli occupation.

Theater won’t stage controversial drama

A South Florida theater dropped a controversial play about an American activist killed in the Gaza Strip.

BY CHRISTINE DOLEN

cdolen@MiamiHerald.com

My Name Is Rachel Corrie, the controversial play about a young American activist who died after she was run over by an Israeli-operated bulldozer in the Gaza Strip, has been pulled from the lineup at Plantation’s Mosaic Theatre after protests from some of the theater’s subscribers and outside individuals.

Mosaic, a professional company that presents its shows in a black-box theater space at the private American Heritage School, had planned to offer the one-woman Rachel Corrie in repertory with Heather Raffo’s 9 Parts of Desire, a solo show about Iraqi women.

But Mosaic’s board of directors agreed to drop the play after phone calls, e-mails and comments on a special Rachel Corrie blog — which has now been removed from the company’s website — made it clear that an impassioned, vocal minority strongly objected to the play. There have been no such complaints about Raffo’s play, which actress Pilar Uribe will perform April 18 through May 13.

“The Words of Rachel Corrie”
Thursday, November, 16th, 7PM
Ellsworth Hall, Pine Manor College
400 Heath St. Manor
Chestnut HIll, MA,

For More Information
Contact: Deborah Peabody, 508.487.9014

From Provincetown to Boston

“The Words of Rachel Corrie”, created and directed by Deborah Peabody and starring Marissa Lena O’Connor was performed all summer at the Provincetown Fringe Festival. Due to the powerful effect that the production has had on the director, the actor, and on audiences and critics, “The Words of Rachel Corrie” will be reproduced in Boston in November and then in Western MA in December.