'My Name Is Rachel Corrie'

Rachel Corrie, a 23-year-old woman from the U.S., was killed in Gaza on March 16, 2003, while trying to stop a U.S.-made Caterpillar bulldozer from destroying a Palestinian home. Three days later the United States began its shock-and-awe assault on Iraq.

Although the U.S. war in Iraq shifted the spotlight off Corrie, it is once again on her—this time on a New York City stage. The play, "My Name Is Rachel Corrie"—a 90-minute monologue crafted from her journals and e-mails—passionately, fiercely, poignantly exposes how the United States uses Israel as a battering ram against the Palestinian people.

A student at Evergreen College in the state of Washington, Corrie was in Gaza as an activist with the International Solidarity Movement. (www.palsolidarity.org)

Corrie had been living with Palestinian families in Gaza for seven weeks before her death—long enough to observe the many daily forms of hostility, humiliation and terrorism practiced by the U.S.-backed Israeli apartheid state against Palestinians. For example, between 2001 and 2003, more than 3,000 Palestinian homes were demolished by Israeli forces.

Corrie was defending one of those Palestinian homes with her body. She was run over and killed while dressed in a bright-orange vest and using a bullhorn to tell the approaching bulldozer driver to stop.

The play, which was edited by British actor/director Alan Rickman and journalist Katharine Viner, reveals Corrie's courage to defend Palestinian self-determination. This has made the play controversial. Last spring one New York theater decided to "postpone" producing it until all the issues raised by the play could be "considered."

After the play opened in another theater in early October, many critics praised the production and Corrie's "poetic power" but dismissed her as "a misguided idealist." One even called her "an ascetic hysteric." Obviously, defending a keystone of U.S. imperialism is ultimately more important to corporate critics than objectively assessing the play's theatrical merits, which are many.

Corrie's lyrical ideas and images, her unique way of connecting the dots, and her compassion all shine through her words, the acting and the staging.

Theater can be used to reinforce the status quo or to fight it. This play has so much potential to reach—and change—people's hearts and minds on an issue that has been slanted by the U.S. corporate press against Palestine for nearly 60 years. This is an opportunity for audiences to see, through Corrie’s words, the horrendous attacks on Palestinian rights and the master which is pulling the strings—U.S. imperialism.

Just as the diary of a young woman who died in Auschwitz over 60 years ago became a testament against Nazi atrocities, this play is a testament to U.S./Israeli atrocities against the Palestinian people.