HOTREVIEW EDITORIAL/OP-ED
A Singular Voice
By Terry Stoller
With the decision by the New York Theatre Workshop
to cancel My Name Is Rachel Corrie, New York audiences, at
least for now, won't be able to see the Royal Court's production. It
has had two successful runs in London and earned critical acclaim for
Megan Dodds's portrayal of the young activist and Alan Rickman's direction
of the one-woman verbatim piece. I'll let others attack the New York
Theatre Workshop for its decision, reportedly based on advice by anonymous
Jewish "leaders" and the current political climate in the Middle East.
Instead I'd like to talk about the play, which I've not seen but have
read, and whose point of view is somewhat troubling to me, especially
because of the assumption of truth in plays that use the words of real
people.
A devotee of verbatim theatre, I prefer verbatim
plays that are balanced, exploring all sides of a situation and including
a multitude of voices. As the title of this play suggests, however,
it represents a single voice. Rachel is a young, aspiring writer from
Washington State. Keenly aware of the world outside Olympia and eager
to help the disenfranchised, she takes a break from college to work
with the International Solidarity Movement, traveling to Gaza in 2003
to aid the Palestinians. The play, edited by Alan Rickman and journalist
Katharine Viner from Rachel's journals and e-mails, clearly makes a
plea for the Palestinians' cause. Rachel early on warns her mother not
to use the word "terrorism" and to resist "perpetuating the
idea that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a balanced conflict, instead
of a largely unarmed people against the fourth most powerful military
in the world." After she has been in Gaza for less than two months,
she deflects her mother's concerns about Palestinian violence, by belittling
the effects of "homemade explosives" and arguing that there can be no
justification for Israel's actions. Earlier, however, she admits that
because she is new to talking about the Palestinian-Israeli situation,
she doesn't always know the political implications of her words. The
play ends with a statement that the 23-year-old was killed by an Israeli
bulldozer, followed by an epilogue: the 10-year-old Rachel's speech
about the need to end world hunger. The production uses a videotape
of the real Rachel Corrie, the effect of which must be heartbreaking
in light of the young woman's untimely death.
Program notes giving historical context might
provide some balance. But presumably people will use their intelligence
to try to understand the complexities of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.
More than one London critic pointed skeptically to Rachel's claim that
the vast majority of Palestinians practiced "Gandhian non-violent resistance."
Thoughtful audiences will surely know that this is an area of the world
in which everything is contested, including whether there was a network
of tunnels under the houses for smuggling weaponry into Rafah, where
Rachel was trying to stop the Israeli bulldozing of the Palestinian
homes.
I hope a New York theatre will soon mount the
Royal Court's production. The Culture Project, which has been home recently
to verbatim plays (The Exonerated, Guantánamo: ‘Honor Bound to Defend
Freedom'), would be a wonderful choice. While I'm not willing to
idealize Rachel Corrie, I strongly believe in the value of firsthand
accounts of history. And I'd appreciate the opportunity to hear the
account of this young woman who, like many other young people in war
zones, had her life tragically cut short.