Fringe Theatre: My Name Is Rachel Corrie, Pleasance

[Englander]

When 23-year-old peace activist Rachel Corrie was mowed down by a bulldozer while protesting in Palestine, the diaries and e-mails she left behind marked a new age of immediacy and articulacy in terms of responses to global injustice. In its Royal Court production, Alan Rickman and Katherine Viner's edited dramatisation tapped into the zeitgeist circulating around a sector of Blair's Britain that has made it an unlikely, if deserved, hit.

This revival, squeezed into the Pleasance Grand, capitalises on the prevailing public outrage at how young lives are lost to unnecessary war-mongering. What stands out here, however, is the sustained freshness of Josephine Foster's performance, who, over 90 minutes, talks us through Corrie's gradual getting of wisdom in a cruel world. There's nothing going on here that its liberal audience won't already know, but it's still heartbreaking to see such change-the-world idealism crushed so soon by the hands of idiotic politicians who should hang their heads in shame.

Link;
TheHerald

[TomClash]

1. Banned in New York

except at the greatest house of worship in New York City - Riverside Church - where a public reading was performed on March 22, 2006.

[rosesaylavee]

2. Banned?

Why?

[jarnocan]

3. Nation-article about the banning here....

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060403/weiss

My Name Is Rachel Corrie--the title comes from a declaration in Corrie's journal--is two things: the self-portrait of a sensitive woman struggling to find her purpose, and a polemic on the horrors of Israeli occupation.....

"The silence results from fear and intimidation," says Cindy Corrie. "I don't see what else. And it harms not only Palestinians. I believe, from the bottom of my heart, it harms Israelis and it harms us.....

Then there is the self-generated fear of lending support to anti-Semites or those who would destroy Israel. All in all, says Kushner, it can leave someone "overwhelmed and in despair--you feel like you should just say nothing."
"

Please read the entire article-if you have the time. We have to understand the criticism of far-right oppresive governments, is not always based on prejudice toward a religion, or race. Many Jewish people also disagree with some policies in their own country- just as many of US do not approve of the Bush regime. In my opinion the play should be seen and discussed.

http://www.indymedia.ie/article/76546 it is being seen in other countries- should we NOT know what they are learning???? http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam/2006/06/23/after-cancellation-my-name-is-rachel-corrie-finally-comes-to-new-york-stage/ ??? Maybe it will be seen after all. have to see how this plays out.

[rosesaylavee]

5. The link to the Nation isn't working

for me - could you double check it?

[TomClash]

9. Here is the link

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060403/weiss

[cali]

4. It was not banned in NY

That's a ridiculous claim. The theater company that was going to put it on was pressured not to, and they succumbed to that pressure. A damn shame, but certainly different from being banned.

[jarnocan]

7. here are many related links to information on the play...

http://rachelswords.org/

In a prepared statement, editor-director Rickman said, “We were never going to paint Rachel as a golden saint or sentimentalize her, but we also needed to face the fact that she’d been demonized. We wanted to present a balanced portrait. The activist part of her life is absolutely matched by the imaginative part of her life. I’ve no doubt at all that had she lived there would have been novels and plays pouring out of her.”

My Name Is Rachel Corrie, according to press notes, “chronicles the human, social and political evolution in the life and controversial death of a young woman.

[TomClash]

8. That's a distinction without a difference

Who do you think pressured the NY Theater Workshop not to produce the play?

[jarnocan]

6. another interesting take on the controversy....

again the entire article is interesting...

The text of the play is based on some extraordinary letters from a young American woman written to her parents in the days and weeks before she was bulldozed to death by the Israeli Defense Force while trying to prevent the destruction of a Palestinian family’s home. The letters convey in an undiluted and specific and deeply moving way the unspeakable things being done to the Palestinian people by the Israeli government, backed by the U.S.

The rapid unraveling of the staging of the play occurred in January against a backdrop of the recent election in Palestine of Hamas, a party whose reactionary theocratic program offers a horrible future for the Palestinian people, even as they present themselves as more “militant” opponents of Israel and the U.S. Rachel deals with none of this, but in an implicit way her letters blow a hole in the idea that people must settle for either accommodating U.S. imperialists or blindly taking up Islamic fundamentalism.

http://www.rwor.org/a/040/battle-over-rachel-corrie.htm I think it is good to read various opinions. does anyone agree the banning is a good thing?

[TomClash]

10. Absolutely right on target nt