Director Brian Freeland has staged many controversial plays in Denver on subjects from Charles Manson to Columbine, but his latest show, opening tonight, may be his touchiest subject yet.
The play is “My Name Is Rachel Corrie,” and this will be only its fourth professional production in the United States. Its inaugural New York staging last year was “indefinitely postponed” after producers cited “a changing political climate.” The play then became known as “too hot for New York.”
Rachel’s mother called the decision shocking. Freeland called it “an act of pure censorship.”
Rachel Corrie was crushed by an Israeli bulldozer in 2003 while trying to stop the demolition of a Palestinian pharmacist’s home in then-occupied Gaza. Ever since, her parents have fought to keep her words alive.
London’s Royal Court Theatre turned Corrie’s journal into a one-woman play that revealed an idealistic and passionate 23-year-old exploring her place in the world amid the complexities of Mideast politics.
“It’s not an anti-Israel play,” says her father, Craig Corrie. “It’s anti-violence.”
But the Anti-Defamation League has said the play distorts the facts. Rachel’s supporters say opposition to the play occurs because Corrie was an American who aligned herself with Palestinian human rights – and, they say, in America that’s the wrong team.
“Openly debating U.S.-supported Israeli policy is a major taboo in our society,” said playwright Jason Grote, whose “1001” premiered at the Denver Center Theatre Company in January.
Grote circulated a petition urging the New York Theatre Workshop to reconsider its decision not to stage the play, arguing that the most viable alternative to violence is not less speech but more, and more constructive speech. The workshop refused. Other major theaters passed.
Six months later, a different company finally brought the play to New York audiences.
That production, as well as one in Seattle, drew protestors, Cindy Corrie said. “We’ve never heard of anything happening within the theater itself … (but) we have encountered people outside the theater.”
The problem in New York, as Grote saw it, was that producers bowed to a single constituency – one that does not speak for all Jewish people.
Evan Weissman does not expect the play to meet the same resistance in Denver.
“If we are even to pretend to be advocates of freedom of speech, then it’s a non-issue. Of course the play should be staged,” said Weissman, an actor and member of several local Jewish groups, including the newly formed Another Jewish Voice for Peace.
“I believe (Rachel’s) nonviolent work should be praised for the traditionally Jewish values it represented: pursuing justice, tzedakah (charity), and tikkun olam (healing and repairing the world).
“As Jews, we should learn from Rachel’s life and do what we can to not repeat the actions that led to her death.”
In the eye of a storm
Craig and Cindy Corrie were thrown into an unimaginable vortex on March 16, 2003, just days before the start of the Iraq war. Not only did they learn of Rachel’s death from neighbors who had read it on a TV news crawl, but their efforts to retrieve her body, demand an investigation and seek accountability would encounter resistance from every branch of the U.S. government.
They believe that if their daughter had died defending an Israeli home, the perpetrators would have been treated by the U.S. as terrorists.
“I think disturbingly, there actually would be far different legal rights our family would have,” Craig Corrie said. Instead, Rachel was painted as the terrorist – or the dupe of them.
The Corries turned to Congress, the Justice Department, the State Department and the courts, only to discover that at every turn, “they don’t just simply look at the alleged act and try to figure out what happened,” said Craig. “It really does depend on who did it.”
The Israeli army concluded the soldiers operating the bulldozer that killed Rachel – who was wearing a bright orange vest – had no intention of harming her. Bruce H. DeBoskey, regional director of the Mountain States Anti-Defamation League, calls Corrie’s death “an horrific accident that occurred in the context of a complex conflict.”
The Corries asked the U.S. House of Representatives for an investigation that was “thorough, credible and transparent.” All but 78 of the 435 House members said no. The Corries blame that on a fear of the pro-Israel lobby in Washington.
“Our congressman had warned us we’d be lucky to get even 30, because any piece of legislation that even implies criticism of Israel was unlikely to go anywhere,” Cindy said.
Corrie’s parents feel it’s not possible to have a civil conversation about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in this country.
“There are many people whose efforts are driven very much by the suffering that Jews have experienced in the world for many, many years,” Cindy said, “and now there is this protection around Israel that I think is actually very damaging because (of) our not looking at this full picture, our not recognizing what’s happened to Palestinians, our not looking at the impact that our foreign policy is having in the world.”
DeBoskey understands a grieving mother’s need for answers, but said, “to blame America’s long-standing support of its strategic ally Israel, a policy supported by the vast majority of Americans and many presidents and leaders of both political parties, is unfortunate and misguided.”
The Corries place some of the blame for their daughter’s death on the U.S. government because it supplied Israel with the Caterpillar bulldozers used to create a wider buffer zone between Egypt and Gaza. They are careful, though, not to assert that their daughter was murdered.
“There’s too much pain for me to go designating them as murderers,” Cindy says, “when I don’t know.”
Theater critic John Moore can be reached at 303-954-1056 or jmoore@denverpost.com.
“My Name Is Rachel Corrie,” by Countdown to Zero, plays at 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays through Nov. 17 at 770 22nd St. (720-221-3821).
To read a complete transcript of John Moore’s interview with the Corries, go to click here.
