The Department of Anthropology, the office of the Vice President for Student Affairs, the Center for the Humanities, and the University Theatre of Oregon State University will present Alan Rickman’s and Katherine Viner’s My Name is Rachel Corrie, October 21-24, 7:30 PM, and October 25 at 2:00 PM in the Lab Theatre of Withycombe Hall, 30th and Campus Way. There will be free pre-show lectures (listed below) in the Green Room of the theatre at 6:30 PM exploring the events that formed some of the background of the play (Sunday talk begins at 1PM). There will be post-show discussions following every performance. Tickets are available at the door. A two dollar donation is suggested.

The play relates the story of Rachel Corrie, a student at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, who went to Gaza to work for Palestinian human rights and was tragically killed there on March 16, 2003. Rachel was a vital young woman driven by her need to make a positive difference in the world. Inspired by her story, and with permission from her family, Rickman and Viner edited Rachel’s diaries, journals, and e-mails to create this fascinating and moving portrait of this dynamic young woman. Newsweek said the play is “theater that not only stirs our hearts but sticks in our heads.” Time Out (London) said of the original production that it had “extraordinary power” and was funny, passionate, bristling with idealism, and luminously intelligent. The London Guardian reported that when theater is as “good as this,” it will “send us out enriched by other people’s passionate concerns.” USA Today noted that the play was “deeply, authentically human.” Rachel Corrie’s story has moved audiences around the world and there have been productions throughout the United States.

Star Tribune

A detailed and wise performance helps explain the activist’s psychic underpinnings.

Actor Emily Gunyou Halaas in My Name is Rachel Corrie.

Media shorthand feeds the impulse to consider activists on political terms — regardless of what those politics are.

“My Name is Rachel Corrie” allows actor Emily Gunyou Halaas to reveal the deeper, universal nature of an activist. Politics is but an implement selected by a person so driven by passion, sensitivity and awareness that activism becomes its own destiny.

“I don’t believe in fate,” Corrie says early in the 100-minute play, which was crafted by Alan Rickman and Katharine Viner from her writings. But whether Corrie believes in fate or not is immaterial. Her actions and reactions — not her ideology — determined her path in life.

Corrie, who grew up in Washington State, was 12 when her consciousness drove her to speak out against hunger. Perhaps jealous of her siblings’ conventional success, she followed her instincts into social-justice causes. At 23, she traveled to live with Palestinian refugees in the Gaza, as part of the International Solidarity Movement. Her efforts might have been remained those of a single person, but in 2003 Corrie was killed when she knelt in front of a bulldozer driven by an Israeli soldier. As happens with martyrs who leave a written legacy, her efforts assumed mythic proportions.