HOTREVIEW EDITORIAL/OP-ED
Thoughts on My Name Is Rachel
Corrie
By Miriam Felton-Dansky
When the New York Theater Workshop recently
postponed its run of My Name Is Rachel Corrie, a controversial
play about pro-Palestinian activist killed in Gaza by an Israeli
bulldozer, it did so apparently at the behest of a concerned Jewish
community. There is no doubt that many Jews would be uncomfortable
with the political message of the play -- but are there really
significant numbers of American Jews whose discomfort would lead
them to call for its cancellation? It's true that Hamas's recent
electoral victory has made Israeli-Palestinian politics especially
tense, and Jewish voices in favor of censorship do exist, as evidenced
by the recent calls of an Israeli group for the film Paradise
Now to be removed from the Oscars because of its portrayal
of Palestinian suicide bombers. But I doubt that views like this
represent the majority of even mainstream Jewish communal leadership,
to say nothing, of course, of the many Jews who support the right
of anyone to criticize Israel and, more to the point, oppose censorship
of any kind. Caving in to those few who favor censorship is not
only unfair to the play's creators and potential audiences, but
also to those in the Jewish community and outside of it who are
working against the circle-the-wagons mentality.
Of course, it's hard to speak accurately
on Jewish public opinion on this issue since, despite the Jewish
community's ostensible role in the postponement, little press
coverage of the issue has conveyed the responses of members of
the Jewish community. Writing in the New York Observer,
John Heilpern quotes from an interview with NYTW artistic director
Jim Nicola in which Nicola declined to cite any Jewish protestors
but mentioned that several Jewish friends had "degrees of discomfort"
with the play. "Degrees of discomfort," then: it does not sound
as if AIPAC was pounding down the door.
Even if a Jewish majority was antagonized,
though, postponement comes down to freedom of expression, and
if that value is to be upheld then no group can be allowed a veto
over content about which it is sensitive. As Heilpern writes,
"Plays written in blood are not meant to be 'acceptable' or 'reach
consensus.'" Yet consensus and acceptability -- the politics of
the play -- have become the crux of the debate, obscuring discussion
on the play itself. Both supporters and detractors of My Name
Is Rachel Corrie argue on the merits of its political content
alone: signatories of the online petition protesting the NYTW's
decision comment over and over again that Corrie's is a voice
that needs to be heard, that it is crucial that the American public
understand the situation in which Palestinians live and the brutality
of the Israeli occupation. Those few on the record as being opposed
to the play's production in New York also engage only with its
purported political content. An Israeli who signed the online
petition against the NYTW writes that the play shows "misinterpretations
of how Israel responds to terrorists" and that the large Israeli
population living in New York would be offended by it.
All of this misses the fact that it is
a play. If co-creators Katharine Viner and Alan Rickman had wanted
to use Corrie to advocate on behalf of Palestinian rights, or
to secure humanitarian aid for Palestinians, they might have written
an Op-Ed about her, donated to the foundation that's been set
up in her name, or lobbied the U.S. government not to cut off
aid to the Palestinian Authority. The fact that they chose to
engage with Corrie's legacy onstage suggests that they were hoping
to turn her story into a specifically theatrical experience --
which raises the question of what kind of theatrical experience
it is, or would have been: good or bad, saccharine or poignant,
riveting or soporific?
Opinions vary on whether My Name Is
Rachel Corrie was good. It won Best New Play prize at the
London Theatregoers' Choice Awards, but Edward Rothstein, writing
in the New York Times, suggests that it is naively one-sided,
showing demolition of Palestinian homes without any hint at broader
context. Of course, these opinions shouldn't have anything to
do with the NYTW's right to produce it. The big question that
is going unnoticed has to do with the purpose of political theater.
Is the job of a play like My Name is Rachel Corrie to
compellingly communicate one point of view, to make activists
out of a theater audience? Conversely, should political theater
always take all sides into account? Can there be a theater whose
political effects are specifically theatrical, in a way that they
could not be if the same sentiments were expressed in writing
or in a tax-deductible donation? New York audiences can't know
-- at least for now -- whether My Name Is Rachel Corrie
has complexity, because questions about its theatrical qualities,
and ultimately its politics too, are now masked behind questions
of freedom of expression that shouldn't need to be fought over
again.
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