[Mb-civic] Cancelled: "My Name Is Rachel Corrie"

[Reeeees at aol.com]

A message crushed again
By Katharine Viner
March 1, 2006  |   Los Angeles Times

THE FLIGHTS for cast and crew had been booked;  the production schedule 
delivered; there were tickets advertised on the  Internet. The Royal Court Theatre 
production of "My Name Is Rachel Corrie," the  play I co-edited with Alan 
Rickman, was transferring later this month to the New  York Theatre Workshop, home 
of the musical "Rent," following two sold-out runs  in London and several 
awards.

We always felt passionately that it was a  piece of work that needed to be 
seen in the United States. Created from the  journals and e-mails of American 
activist Rachel Corrie, telling of her journey  from her adolescence in Olympia, 
Wash., to her death under an Israeli bulldozer  in Gaza at the age of 23, we 
considered it a unique American story that would  have a particular relevance 
for audiences in Rachel's home country. After all,  she had made her journey 
to the Middle East in order "to meet the people who are  on the receiving end 
of our [American] tax dollars," and she was killed by a  U.S.-made bulldozer 
while protesting the demolition of Palestinian  homes.

But last week the New York Theatre Workshop canceled the  production — or, in 
its words, "postponed it indefinitely." The political  climate, we were told, 
had changed dramatically since the play was booked. As  James Nicola, the 
theater's 's artistic director, said Monday, "Listening in our  communities in 
New York, what we heard was that after Ariel Sharon's illness and  the election 
of Hamas in the recent Palestinian elections, we had a very edgy  situation." 
Three years after being silenced for good, Rachel was to be censored  for 
political reasons.

I'd heard from American friends that life for  dissenters had been getting 
worse — wiretapping scandals, arrests for wearing  antiwar T-shirts, Muslim 
professors denied visas. But it's hard to tell from  afar how bad things really 
are. Here was personal proof that the political  climate is continuing to shift 
disturbingly, narrowing the scope of free debate  and artistic expression, in 
only a matter of weeks. By its own admission the  theater's management had 
caved in to political pressure. Rickman, who also  directed the show in London, 
called it "censorship born out of fear, and the New  York Theatre Workshop, the 
Royal Court, New York audiences — all of us are the  losers."

It makes you wonder. Rachel was a young, middle-class,  scrupulously 
fair-minded American woman, writing about ex-boyfriends,  troublesome parents and a 
journey of political and personal discovery that took  her to Gaza. She worked 
with Palestinians and protested alongside them when she  felt their rights were 
denied. But the play is not agitprop; it's a complicated  look at a woman who 
was neither a saint nor a traitor, both serious and funny,  messy and 
talented and human. Or, in her own words, "scattered and deviant and  too loud." If a 
voice like this cannot be heard on a New York stage, what hope  is there for 
anyone else? The non-American, the nonwhite, the oppressed, the  truly other?

Rachel's words from Gaza are a bridge between these two  worlds — and now 
that bridge is being severed. After the Hamas victory, the need  for 
understanding is surely greater than ever, and I refuse to believe that most  Americans 
want to live in isolation. One night in London, an Israeli couple,  members of 
the right-wing Likud party on holiday in Britain, came up after the  show, 
impressed. "The play wasn't against Israel; it was against violence," they  told 
Cindy Corrie, Rachel's mother.

I was particularly touched by a young  Jewish New Yorker from an Orthodox 
family who said he had been nervous about  coming to see "My Name Is Rachel 
Corrie" because he had been told that both she  and the play were viciously 
anti-Israel. But he had been powerfully moved by  Rachel's words and realized that he 
had, to his alarm, been dangerously  misled.

The director of the New York theater told the New York Times on  Monday that 
it wasn't the people who actually saw the play he was concerned  about.

"I don't think we were worried about the audience," he said. "I  think we 
were more worried that those who had never encountered her writing,  never 
encountered the piece, would be using this as an opportunity to position  their 
arguments."

Since when did theater come to be about those who don't  go to see it? If the 
play itself, as Nicola clearly concedes, is not the  problem, then isn't the 
answer to get people in to watch it, rather than  exercising prior censorship? 
George Clooney's outstanding movie "Good Night, and  Good Luck" recently 
reminded us of the importance of standing up to witch hunts;  one way to carry on 
that tradition would be to insist on hearing Rachel Corrie's  words — words 
that only two weeks ago were deemed  acceptable.

KATHARINE VINER is the features editor at the Guardian in  London and the 
editor, with Alan Rickman, of "My Name is Rachel Corrie," which  premiered at the 
Royal Court Theatre in April 2005. Because of the cancellation  of the New 
York run, the play is transferring to the Playhouse Theatre in  London's West 
End. 
 
_http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-oe-viner1mar01,1,2229722.
story_ 
(http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-oe-viner1mar01,1,2229722.story) 
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