Maybe you've heard something about the play, "My Name Is Rachel Corrie." You probably haven't seen it; few people have. But you know it's controversial, that it's not balanced, that it's too sympathetic to the Palestinian point of view and doesn't fairly present the Israeli side.
That's all true, and it was enough to get a scheduled production in New York City canceled. But the play is also a remarkable piece of art, and it's not meant to be balanced. It's based solely on the writings, journals and e-mails of a young woman volunteering for a peace organization who was run over by a bulldozer operated by the Israeli Defense Forces in Rafah, in the Gaza Strip, on March 16, 2003.
Originally staged in Britain, the play opened in Shepherdstown, W.Va., in July amidst much consternation over how it would be received. The Contemporary Theater Arts Festival housed at Shepherd University is the brainchild of producer-director Ed Herendeen, and he stood his ground in the face of the uproar. One board member resigned, but fears that the controversy would hurt ticket sales proved unfounded. The festival is having its best year yet fulfilling its goal of producing edgy and original theater pieces. Rachel Corrie's parents were there the weekend I saw the play. Talking with them made the experience especially meaningful.
Craig and Cindy Corrie were living in North Carolina when Rachel, their third child, announced she wanted to go to Gaza. Her mother's first reaction was to search the Internet for a similar stressed place in the world, like India, that might attract their idealistic daughter without posing as much danger. Rachel, fresh out of college and living in Washington State, had gotten caught up in the peace movement in Seattle, where she signed up with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), an organization set up to support Palestinian nonviolent resistance to the Israeli military occupation. The Corries had never thought deeply about the Israeli-Palestinian problem, and their sympathies, like most Americans, tended toward the Israeli side. They worried about their daughter's safety. But she was a 24-year-old woman living in another state, and this was her decision to make, not theirs.
"My Name Is Rachel Corrie" is drawn from the prolific musings of this young woman from the time she was 10 years old and won an essay contest calling for an end to world hunger. It is not meant to solve the Middle East crisis. Critics of the play say the ISM is a terrorist front group and that Rachel had been used as a human shield. Rachel's naiveté is the one element everybody agrees on. "I'm kind of new talking about the Middle East Palestinian crisis," she e-mailed her parents. "I don't always know the political implications of my work." Rachel was crushed to death as she stood trying to prevent the demolition of Palestinian homes thought to be complicit in tunneling terrorists into Israel. Her family learned of her death when their older daughter, Sarah, saw it on a crawl across the television screen. They were disbelieving at first; then they spent months that turned into years learning everything they could about how and why their daughter died, and the cause that had stolen her away from them.
The play that honors Rachel's life is really about letting go: loving, protective parents learning to let go of their child, and a determined, dreamy child learning to let go of her parents. "I'm sorry I scare you," Rachel e-mailed her parents from Gaza. "But I want to write and I want to see. And what would I write about if I only stayed within the doll's house, the flower-world I grew up in?" The power of the play is in Rachel's words, and in her journey. As a child, she had a long list of things she would be when she grew up, including the first woman president. And when adults would ask what she wanted to be, she would declare, "I AM a poet." She remembers how her mother would walk her down the hill to school, and sometimes they'd play hooky together, going to the bookstore and to lunch. "My mother would never admit it, but she wanted me exactly how I turned out—scattered and deviant and too loud," Rachel writes in her journal. Her father is shy about expressing emotions to his headstrong daughter. He e-mails less often than she'd like, relying on his wife to convey family news, saying he's proud of her but wishes he could be proud of somebody else's daughter.
After the production, theatergoers assembled on the campus lawn for a "Peace Café." One man had bought the script to read but refused to see the play because he didn't want to be manipulated by the emotion. An ad in the theater program reminds patrons of "The Other Rachels" who died at the hands of Palestinian terrorists. The Corries have met with Israelis who've lost a child to Hamas suicide bombers. Grief crosses all boundaries, and so should theater. "My name is Rachel Corrie" is a welcome start.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
