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My Name is Rachel Corrie

Drama

Seattle Repertory Theatre

Venue: Leo K Theatre
155 Mercer St
Queen Anne, Seattle
206-443-2222
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Opening Night: Thursday, March 15, 2007
Closes: Sunday, April 22, 2007

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My Name is Rachel Corrie by Alan Rickman and Katherine Viner

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This event has been viewed 2146 times
Last viewed on September 3, 2010, 12:52 am
It was last updated on April 3, 2007, 12:25 pm
It was originally posted: 2006-06-02 14:49:48
By Seattle Repertory Theatre

DESCRIPTION

My Name is Rachel Corrie
by Alan Rickman and Katharine Viner,
from the writings of Rachel Corrie
March 15 – April 22, 2007

In March of 2003, 23-year-old Evergreen College graduate Rachel Corrie went to the Gaza Strip armed with her activist passion and artistic sensibilities to try to find a way to understand a deeply complex situation. The Guardian wrote “Theatre can’t change the world. But what it can do…is to send us out enriched by other people’s passionate concern.”

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average rating: - from 1 reviewer
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Rachel Corrie is finally home.

Rachel Corrie Play Finds a Home in the Northwest

By Kristin Alexander
to be pub. in the April 5 edition of The Sitting Duck

Rachel Corrie is finally home.

Four years after the 23-year-old Evergreen State College student was crushed by an Israeli bulldozer while trying to spare a Palestinian home from destruction, the play based on Rachel’s diaries and e-mails made its Northwest debut at the Seattle Repertory Theatre. "My Name is Rachel Corrie" opened in March, dragging along with it some of the controversy that began on the East Coast, and will travel to Evergreen later this month.

Marya Sea Kaminiski stars in the one-woman show, which exposes Rachel’s thoughts and convictions through stages of her life, beginning when she was an imaginative 12-year-old to her years as a Greener and finally, her decision to join the International Solidarity Movement in Gaza. More than anything, it’s a story about one woman’s passion – for humanity, the environment and life itself.

The play is the vision of actor and director Alan Rickman (Snape from the "Harry Potter" films) and Katharine Viner, who is an editor at the London "Guardian". It premiered at London’s Royal Court Theatre in April 2005, moved to a larger West End theater and won several awards. Complaints of censorship came from both sides of the Atlantic when the New York Theatre Workshop, citing sensitivities in the Jewish community about Hamas’ victory in the Palestinian elections, killed a run scheduled for spring 2006. Another NYC theater finally picked up the UK production last fall; then a Toronto company took heat for dropping the play from its season.

Protestors in Seattle were unobtrusive as they passed out flyers to people entering the theater. Pro-Israel groups also took out ads in the playbill; an ad placed by the Seattle Jewish Federation features six Israeli women, also named Rachel, who they say were killed by Palestinian terrorists. Another paid for by the Pacific Northwest Anti-Defamation League claims that Israeli bulldozers were searching for terrorist tunnels when Rachel was killed. ADL’s director insisted they have no interest in stopping the production, just showing people another side to the story.

It’s tough to see what all the fuss is about. In the balcony where I sat, audience members laughed, sighed and slept. Three men in the back row displayed various expressions of boredom; one stared at the ceiling, another at his knees, the third left before the play was over.

Kaminski, a founding member of Seattle’s Washington Ensemble Theatre who has created more than twenty solo shows, portrays Rachel with a sprightly idealism and curiosity. Young Rachel glued postcards of goddesses to her bedroom walls. She sang in the forest. She had a dream to stop hunger by the year 2000.

But as Kaminski slowly converts Jennifer Zeal’s set from Rachel’s messy bedroom to a bullet-ridden home, packing up Rachel’s possessions in milk crates and turning a bed into a simple floor mat, this optimism erodes while the “fire” in her belly burns stronger.

Rachel wrote: “I wonder if you can forgive the world for all the years spent existing – just existing – in resistance to the constant attempt to erase you from your home. That is something I wonder about these children. I wonder what would happen if they really knew.”

Director Braden Abraham makes intelligent choices with creative scene transformations and clever technical effects. Lighting by L.B. Morse and sound by Obadiah Eaves help us imagine each setting and make the violence seem real.

My theater companion for this show knew Rachel; they attended Capital High School in Olympia together, and while they weren’t friends, Sarah Frost said she was impacted by Rachel’s death. Knowing someone who died in the Palestine-Israel conflict prompted her to take a closer look at issues that “I don’t think about or perhaps choose not to think about,” she said. She described Rachel as someone who was liked by many; “Not one of those people who wants everybody to like them, but wanted everyone to feel good.”

I, too, grew up in Olympia. But I didn’t meet Rachel until a few weeks ago when I read the script "My Name is Rachel Corrie" while sipping iced tea at a mega-chain bookstore. I found her writing deeply moving, full of vivid imagery and profoundly insightful for such a young person. I was able to appreciate references to local places like Plum Street and Puget Pantry. "Rachel" on stage stirred my soul less than "Rachel" on page, perhaps because I was familiar with the story or maybe because her voice sounded different in my head.

The conventions of a one-character show aren’t for everyone. But here in the Northwest, where Rachel’s death meant more than a headline, "My Name is Rachel Corrie" is likely to be successful.

Copyright by Kristin Alexander.
Kristin Alexander is a Seattle freelance writer and actress. She can be reached at www.freshprose.com.

-Kristin Alexander

March 25, 2007, 11:55 am

REVIEWS & PREVIEWS

User-Submitted Reviews

Seattle Weekly
Review by Richard Morin
Tuesday, April 3, 2007
A gutsy production that everyone opposed to it should see.
(read article)

The Stranger
Review by Brendan Kiley
Tuesday, April 3, 2007
It\'s an imperfect but moving portrait of a woman transformed by her death into an icon
(read article)

Seattle Times
Review by Misha Berson
Tuesday, April 3, 2007
This actor may make you care about Corrie even if you don\'t share her politics.
(read article)

The Stranger
Preview by Brendan Kiley
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
(read article)

Talkin' Broadway
Review by David Edward Hughes
Tuesday, April 3, 2007
It seems to exist just to be controversial, but it consistently failed to engage or retain my attention.
(read article)

average rating: - from 1 reviewer
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Rachel Corrie is finally home. Rachel Corrie Play Finds a Home in the Northwest By Kristin Alexander to be pub. in the April 5 edition of The Sittin ...

-Kristin Alexander

March 25, 2007, 11:55 am