Vancouver, Canada: My Name is Rachel Corrie, June 22 and 24
Volunteer worker killed in Gaza Strip inspires play
Controversial work based on Rachel Corrie’s writings will be staged at World Urban Festival
Kevin Griffin
Vancouver Sun
Wednesday, June 21, 2006
A little more than three years ago, a young woman named Rachel Corrie was crushed to death by an Israeli bulldozer while defending a Palestinian home from destruction in the Gaza Strip.
Corrie, a 23-year-old from Olympia, Wash., was a volunteer with the International Solidarity Movement, a Palestinian-led group dedicated to resisting the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land through non-violent direct action.
Her death could have been nothing more than a tragic but fleeting news story in the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But it became much more lasting and significant because of the powerful writing Corrie left behind, which has been turned into a controversial play being staged during Earth: The World Urban Festival, the cultural and artistic component to the UN’s World Urban Forum in Vancouver.
Called My Name is Rachel Corrie, the work will receive two staged readings at the festival by 10 non-professional actors. The cast includes two 11-year-olds, a Japanese-Canadian in his 60s, a former International Solidarity Movement activist and Canadians of Christian, Jewish and Muslim heritage.
Marcus Youssef, one of the show’s five directors, said the work is ideal for the festival because of the story it tells of one person deciding to get involved in what seems like an unsolvable political issue.
“What I want people to hear is this young woman who made a choice to try to engage with a political issue that seems intractable, that’s surrounded with ideological positions,” Youssef said.
“How can we possibly engage with some of the big conflicts in the world that we have a part of in some way and in another, seem remote from our lives? She’s a young woman who actually made an attempt to wrestle with that question.”
Youssef said what stands out about My Name is Rachel Corrie is Corrie’s unique voice as a writer.
“When you hear this young woman’s writing, whatever your ideological or political position on the occupation and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, there is absolutely no denying the unbelievable humanity and intelligence and self-effacement and just sheer commitment to life that’s in her writing,” he said.
“She’s a brilliant, brilliant writer. Brilliant writers don’t come along all the time and you certainly don’t expect it from some 23-year-old leftie activist kid from Olympia.”
My Name is Rachel Corrie became a play when Alan Rickman (Die Hard, Harry Potter) and Guardian foreign desk editor Katherine Viner received permission from the Corrie family to edit 184 pages of Corrie’s journals, lists and e-mails. The 70-minute, one-woman play premiered at London’s Royal Court last spring to sell-out houses and rave reviews.
The play was scheduled for a performance by the New York Theatre Workshop this spring, but that never happened. Theatre artists such as Harold Pinter, Tony Kushner and Vanessa Redgrave criticized the workshop for censorship and artistic cowardice; the workshop said the play was being postponed, not cancelled.
The controversy over the play has also reached into Canada. Youssef said a recent public reading in Toronto was turned into an invitation-only event over concerns about what the play has come to represent in the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Youssef, one of three members of the NeWorld artistic producing team, said he found out about the play last year while teaching a course at Concordia University in Montreal. Youssef said that when he read the play, he was devastated by Corrie’s story.
What’s ironic, Youssef said, is that the rhetoric used to build the ideological positions around the play are completely at odds with Corrie’s personal language and self-effacing irony.
The first part of My Name is Rachel Corrie is about Corrie’s life growing up in Olympia and the last half is about her experiences in Gaza before she was killed.
My Name is Rachel Corrie, produced by NeWorld Theatre and Judith Marcuse Projects, is a ticketed event being staged Thursday, June 22 at 8 p.m. and Saturday, June 24 at 6 p.m. at Tent 2 at the festival site at 555 Great Northern Way.
