Rachel’s Words

Photos of the March 22nd event by Matthew Weinstein

March 22, 2006 - In the light of the cancellation by the Manhattan Theater Club’s production of My Name Is Rachel Corrie, several thousand New Yorkers turned out tonight at Riverside Church to hear writers, artists, playwrights and activists speak her writings. The play would tell the story - in her own words and emails - of the courageous 23-year old American woman who travelled to Gaza to protect innocent Palestinians and who stood in front of an Israeli bulldozer in an attempt to prevent the driver from destroying a Palestinian home. The bulldozer drove over her and then reversed and crushed her a second time. “My back is broken,” she said before she died.

Declaring that the Sharon government could destroy her body but could never kill her spirit, people have stood up to those who would cave in to the new McCarthyism that attempts to stifle opposition and protest to the unjust policies of the U.S. and Israeli occupations.

by Billy Bragg
Download song here [.mp3]

Rachel Corrie went to Gaza to draw attention to the plight of the Palestinians, whose voice is seldom heard in her country, the US. That she herself should be silenced - first by an Israeli bulldozer, next by a New York theatre cancelling a play created from her words - is a testimony to the power of her message. This song was written on a plane on March 20 and recorded at Big Sky Recordings, Ann Arbor, Michigan on March 22. The tune is borrowed from Bob Dylan.

An Israeli bulldozer killed poor Rachel Corrie
As she stood in its path in the town of Rafah
She lost her young life in an act of compassion
Trying to protect the poor people of Gaza
Whose homes are destroyed by tank shells and bulldozers
And whose plight is exploited by suicide bombers
Who kill in the name of the people of Gaza
But Rachel Corrie believed in non-violent resistance
Put herself in harm’s way as a shield of the people
And paid with her life in a manner most brutal

But you who philosophise disgrace and criticise all fears,
Take the rag away from your face.
Now ain’t the time for your tears.

First, I must admit that when the Corrie play controversy started I was one of the voices in our email circle least upset, or at least most in the vein of “let’s hear what they have to say before we send out the lynching party.” I engaged in dialogue but not nearly as passionately as some of my peers, feeling like while the larger issues raised were ones I wholeheartedly agree with, that people were jumping to conclusions based on past and politics, not on this case. Tonight made me see and remember a whole host of other sides to this story. Somehow you managed to put together people who spoke to the context, the personal, the political, the intersection of the two, the larger controversy yet never leaning to diatribes or political posturing. I was SO impressed with the quality of writing and speaking, with the moving turnout, and with the smooth organization and orchestration of the whole event. It was amazing to see what you pulled together so professionally in such a short time.

Published in The New York Times

To the Editor:

Re “Theater Addresses Tension Over Play” (Arts pages, March 16):

We are Jewish writers who supported the Royal Court production of “My Name Is Rachel Corrie.” We are dismayed by the decision of the New York Theater Workshop to cancel or postpone the play’s production. We believe that this is an important play, particularly, perhaps, for an American audience that too rarely has an opportunity to see and judge for itself the material it contends with.

In London it played to sell-out houses. Critics praised it. Audiences found it intensely moving. So what is it about Rachel Corrie’s writings, her thoughts, her feelings, her confusions, her idealism, her courage, her search for meaning in life — what is it that New York audiences must be protected from?

The various reasons given by the workshop — Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s coma, the election of Hamas, the circumstances of Rachel Corrie’s death, the “symbolism” of her tale — make no sense in the context of this play and the crucial issues it raises about Israeli military activity in the occupied territories.

Published by The New York Times

To the Editor:

Re ”Theater Addresses Tension Over Play” (Arts pages, March 16):

Last fall, my wife and I spent a week in London seeing plays. We, fortunately, stumbled upon ”My Name Is Rachel Corrie” at the Royal Court Theater. It was the best theater experience we had the whole week.

We still can’t stop talking about the play. It was a beautifully crafted, touching story of this remarkable young woman.

If any not-for-profit theater balks at presenting this piece because its directors think it’s too controversial, they should close up shop. This is exactly the kind of theater New Yorkers should see and talk about.

James Walsh

New York, March 16, 2006

Published by James Wolcott
Vanity Fair contributing editor

I had to walk through a gantlet of Catholic picketers protesting that Godard film about the Virgin Mary years back. Not a very good movie, either, though the actress’s bushy pubic hair got a number of male critics so excited you’d think they had never seen bushy p. h. before, and perhaps they hadn’t.

Then I had to wade through a similar batch of Catholic protesters to get to Terrence McNally’s play Corpus Christi, which also wasn’t up to much apart from a lot of solemn ritual and toned, bared torsos. Tedium reigned. Worse, they closed the theater during intermission so that protesters couldn’t sneak in (while audience members snuck out for a smoke or fresh air) and disrupt act two. Otherwise, I would have fled and taken a candy bar with me.

The suffering I do for what some consider art.

But if those events could take place without major incident, there’s no reason why My Name Is Rachel Corrie couldn’t be staged in New York without eruption. It played in London without gang warfare breaking out in the lobby, and presumably New Yorker audiences and media possess a similar maturity. But it’s never safe to assume, as Philip Weiss reminds us in this week’s Nation cover story about putting Rachel Corrie’s story into cold storage.

By Andrew Ford Lyons
Published by the Palestine Chronicle

How quickly we backslide: In June of 1937 the federal government slapped chains and a padlock onto the doors of Maxine Elliot Theatre in New York. It was an attempt to halt a performance of “The Cradle Will Rock,” a Marc Blizstein musical the feds found far too full of dangerous ideas for public consumption. The show’s director, Orson Welles, rushed back from Washington, D.C., on opening day after a failed attempt to convince the government to lift its ban. He found about 600 people waiting to see the performance idling in front of the theater, along with his cast.

Welles got on the phone that day and eventually led the throngs of theater goers and his cast through the city’s streets to the Venice Theatre where, due to fear of reprisals and potential loss of work, the performers belted out their songs and spoke their lines while staying scattered amongst the audience under dimmed lights. Blizstein was the only one to take the stage that night to provide piano accompaniment.

Censorship of the Worst Kind

By Vanessa Redgrave

I am urging the Royal Court Theatre to sue the New York Theatre Workshop for the cancellation of the production of “My Name Is Rachel Corrie”. Not because I donated money for this production, which the Royal Court have been fundraising for – a target of 50,000 pounds, underwritten by Alan Rickman.

This is censorship of the worst kind. More awful even than that. It is black-listing a dead girl and her diaries. A very brave and exceptional girl who all citizens, whatever their faith or nationality, should be proud and grateful for her existence. They couldn’t silence her voice while she lived, so she was killed. Her voice began to speak again as Alan Rickman read her diaries, and Megan Dodds became Rachel Corrie. Now the New York Theatre Workshop have silenced that dear voice.

I shall never forget the glimpse, at the close of Alan Rickman’s production, of Rachel when 10 years old, shot on a little family movie camera, making her speech about world poverty and the urgent need to end the misery. The New York Theatre Workshop have silenced that little girl, as well as the girl who confronted the Israeli army Caterpillar bulldozer.