Seven Oaks Magazine.

My Name is Rachel Corrie made its West Coast debut last week at Seattle’s Repertory Theatre. The one-woman play is based on Corrie’s life and untimely death. The Olympia Washington native was killed four years ago, in March 2003, at the age of 23. She was crushed by an Isreali bulldozer while she tried, along with an International Solidarity Movement team in the Gaza Strip, to protect a Palestinian home from demolition.

Rachel Corrie’s life, her personal and political passions, and her desire to contribute to peace in the Middle East are compellingly acted out by Seattle’s Marya Sea Kaminski, who brings her talents to a play that has encountered many obstacles in being brought to stage.

The play is based on Corrie’s journals and email correspondence, which were published in the UK Guardian after her death, and was originally conceived by actor/director Alan Rickman and Guardian editor Katharine Viner. Corrie’s writing is both the inspiration and the script; the young woman was a colourful and talented writer, eloquently describing her wish to not be complicit in her country’s central role supporting the Israeli occupation. The play is effective both because of Kaminski’s delivery, but also because it injects the personal hopes and dreams of a young woman – loves lost, career plans, and family dramas – in addition to Corrie’s evolving political views.

The play has sparked controversy wherever it has been produced or, more accurately, wherever people have attempted to produce it. This has left the British creators screaming censorship, and left many in the artistic community questioning just how free speech is in North America, where the play hits political nerves. My Name is Rachel Corrie was deemed “too hot” for the Big Apple, for instance. The opening night was dark last year at an off-Broadway production, with the theatre reporting that they would postpone the production indefinitely, stating a need to be “sensitive” to those in the Jewish community at the time of the Palestinian elections (Weiss, The Nation 2006). The play eventually saw the stage in New York City, but not until theatre activists protested the work’s censorship and another theatre house finally accommodated the play.

The controversy followed the play north of the border, with Toronto’s Canada Stage production recently announcing the cancellation of the play. So, as one can image, the play has not made it to the stage in Corrie’s own backyard of Seattle without encountering some resistance.

Located in the Seattle Centre entertainment hub, the Seattle Repertory Theatre is one of the most prestigious in the city, with the likes of Bill and Melinda Gates and Steve Allen as major bank rollers. As I waited in line outside the sold-out show, the politics that make the play so interesting were in play outside, illustrating how Corrie’s life and death has made her not just a young woman who wanted to change the world, but also a symbol used by both sides of the Middle East debate. As Palestine solidarity activists handed out what they jovially called “propaganda” outside the show, a political debate broke out in the line up. A couple waiting to see another play got into a discussion about Corrie’s “foolishness”, inflaming bystanders by stating, “if you are going to lie down (sic) in front of a tank, then you deserve to die.”

Significantly, the attacks on Corrie’s actions and integrity did not stop outside the theatre. The program for My Name is Rachel Corrie, incredibly, contains prominent advertisements that attempt to discredit the play. One from the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle called “All the Rachels” claims that Corrie “fell in front of an Isreali Army Bulldozer” as she was trying to stop “an Isreali counter-terrorism operation”. The ad then goes on to list Israelis named Rachel who have been killed in suicide bombings. Further on in the program, a full-page ad warns audience members not to be “misled” because the play “does not tell the whole story,” and goes on to claim that Corrie was actually a member of an “extremist group”.

David Esbjornson, the Artistic Director of the theatre, has a letter in the program in which he explains his views on the play and the controversy surrounding it:

The purpose of art is to inspire us to be more than we are, to question our own assumptions or our entrenched ideas. My Name is Rachel Corrie certainly achieves this; it is an impassioned call to action. The depiction of her life forces the audience to question their assumptions about a young radical, who was in fact not dogmatic or hateful, but whose spirit was caring and who was desperately trying to find good and genuine beauty amidst a hideous conflict.

Her words, which form the core of the play, often brought the audience to tears, describing the appalling conditions of life endured under occupation. In recent years, public opinion in North America has gradually begun to shift towards greater opposition to the Israeli occupation. Jimmy Carter’s controversial new book, Palestine Peace Not Apartheid, has for instance had a long run on bestsellers lists.

My Name is Rachel Corrie, however, has had to struggle to get a run on stage at all. This play is worth the drive to Seattle, where it runs until May 6. It’s unlikely to be at a theatre any nearer to you anytime soon.