'Words' honors her fight for peace
In March 2003, Rachel Corrie, a 23-year-old peace activist from Olympia, Wash., was crushed to death by an Israeli bulldozer while trying to protect the home of a Palestinian doctor and his family from demolition. The International Solidarity Movement, for whom Corrie had volunteered, claimed she was run over intentionally. The Israeli Defense Forces said she was killed by falling debris.
``The Words of Rachel Corrie," a play based on a series of e-mails she sent to her family, opens Tuesday at the Provincetown Fringe Festival. It comes after controversy about another play, ``My Name Is Rachel Corrie," a production of which the New York Theatre Workshop postponed because of political concerns.
Deborah Peabody, director and creator of ``The Words of Rachel Corrie," explained to the Globe recently via e-mail how the show came together.
What's the back story of this play?
I heard about the death of Rachel Corrie at about the time it happened via Internet news. [Another] play, ``My Name Is Rachel Corrie," a compilation of journal entries and e-mails from Rachel, had two successful runs in London. I did not know of the play until it was scheduled to come to New York. A couple of friends told me about it, including Marj Conn, the producer of the Provincetown Fringe Festival, for whom I directed Eve Ensler's ``Necessary Targets" last year.
A progressive theater company in New York canceled the American premiere, in the words of an article in [The] Nation magazine, ``out of concern for the sensitivities of (unnamed) Jewish groups unsettled by Hamas's victory in the Palestinian elections."
A group of well-known actors and writers performed a reading of the e-mails at the Riverside Church in New York. Marj got in touch with some people behind that and learned that Rachel's family and supporters wanted her voice to be heard and offered the e-mails for public readings. Marj and I had been hoping to come up with a play to do this summer at the Fringe that would . . . serve the cause of peace and justice. She sent me the websites [www.rachelswords.org and www.rachelcorrie.org, where the e-mails can be found] , and I began working on a presentation.
The show as I have put it together tells the story of Rachel's development through her idealism into brutal reality, and her struggle to justify her life with what she saw and lived through in Rafah in Palestine.
What other voices do we hear in the play?
Beside Rachel, we hear (briefly) from her father and her mother, from an Israeli soldier writing to encourage her, from a press release from the International Solidarity Movement, and an eyewitness account of her death written by another American [volunteer with the ISM]. Rachel will be played by Marissa Lena O'Connor . Male voices will be read by Chuck Cole. Other female voices will be read by me.
``The Words of Rachel Corrie" will be performed on Tuesdays through Aug. 29 at the Provincetown Inn, 1 Commercial St., Provincetown. Tickets: $15. 508-487-2666, www.ptownfringe.org.
