Controversy follows 'Corrie' back to NYC
NEW YORK-- A play about an American student who was killed by an Israeli bulldozer while trying to stop the destruction of a Palestinian home in the Gaza Strip will open in New York in October, several months after another theater pulled the show from its schedule, drawing charges of censorship.
Producers Pam Pariseau and Dena Hammerstein said that they will present the US premiere of London's Royal Court Theatre production of the one-woman show ``My Name Is Rachel Corrie" at the Minetta Lane Theatre. Previews are scheduled to start on Oct. 5 for a 48-performance run scheduled to end Oct. 15.
Director Alan Rickman and Katherine Viner, features editor of The Guardian newspaper in London, put the one-woman play together from the diaries, letters, and e-mails of Corrie, a 23-year-old human rights activist, who died in the southern Gaza town of Rafah in March 2003.
The play opened at the Royal Court Theatre in London in April 2005 to generally positive reviews, returned for an encore engagement and was nominated for an Olivier Award.
"Rachel Corrie" returned for a limited run at London's Playhouse Theatre in the West End this spring after the New York Theatre Workshop, one of the city's leading off-Broadway spaces, indefinitely suspended a production scheduled to open in March.
At the time, Rickman said the Theatre Workshop had canceled the run, and accused it of ``censorship born out of fear." But in a March 14 statement posted on the company's website, Theatre Workshop artistic director James C. Nicola said the company had sought only more time to ``find ways to let Rachel's words rise above the polemics."
``We regret that requesting more time to achieve that goal was interpreted as failing to fulfill a commitment and, worse, as censorship," he said.
Corrie traveled to the Middle East with the International Solidarity Movement, an activist group that tries to stop Israeli military operations in the Palestinian territories. An Israeli investigation ruled the death accidental. But Corrie's aunt, Cheryl Brodersen, quoted a letter dated June 11, 2004, from the US State Department saying they did not consider the Israeli investigation to be ``thorough" or ``credible."
A play based on Corrie's e - mails, ``The Words of Rachel Corrie," is being performed on Tuesdays through Aug. 29 as part of the Provincetown Fringe Festi-val.
