Denver Post theater critic John Moore writes about the Countdown to Zero theater company’s staging of My Name is Rachel Corrie, with interviews of the actress and Corrie family as he reports on a unique take on the play: “Countdown to Zero, the closest thing to an experimental company to stage the play to date, made several artistic choices the Corries had never seen before: A set made primarily of sand. Certain passages treated as almost musical departures. The actor playing their daughter also reading the epilogue about her death.”

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Susan Stein reviews the production of  the Humboldt State University Van Duzer Theatre production of My Name is Rachel Corrie for the Arcata Eye in Arcata, CA.:

“Whatever one’s perspective on the Israelis and Palestinians, Rachel Corrie makes a completely human entrance on the scene. As we glimpse her through her journals and letters in My Name is Rachel Corrie, the 23-year-old college student activist lives with Palestinians and works in support of their self-determination, and seems purely to hold nothing against Jewish Israelis, whom she refers to with compassion.”

By Fawaz Turki
Special to Gulf News
A three-hour ride on the Metroliner from Washington, my hometown, to New York will get you to Gaza. Well, not quite. But the ethos of that tormented strip of land, whose suffering is beyond all rational understanding, is so compellingly evoked on the stage of the off-Broadway Menetta Lane Theatre, that you think you’re there.

The play, My Name Is Rachel Corrie, a riveting one-woman show, is the story of Rachel Corrie, the young, all-American youngster who was crushed to death 3 years ago, at age 23, under an Israeli bulldozer as she tried to shield a Palestinian home from demolition, one of 3,000 homes destroyed by the Israeli military in the Rafah region of Gaza between 2001 and 2003. (read the full article here)

A monologue fashioned from the words of a woman killed in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict creates drama on-stage and off

WEB-EXCLUSIVE COMMENTARY
By Cathleen McGuigan
Newsweek

Oct. 16, 2006 - Do you remember the name Rachel Corrie? Maybe not. She was a 23-year-old American peace activist killed by an Israeli Army bulldozer as she tried to block the destruction of a Palestinian’s house in Gaza in March 2003. She became more than a footnote in the Middle East conflict when her own words—from her journals and e-mails—were shaped into an award-winning one-actor play in London called “My Name is Rachel Corrie.” But when the show’s U.S. opening last spring was cancelled at the New York Theater Workshop (best known for spawning the musical “Rent”), a controversy erupted. The theater’s artistic director had made his decision after talking to leaders in the Jewish community; he later told The New York Times, “It seemed as though if we proceeded, we would be taking a stand we didn’t want to take.” The London producers called the cancellation “censorship.” (more…)

THEATER
by Jason Zinoman
New York Times

It’s fitting that “THE CLEAN HOUSE” and “MY NAME IS RACHEL CORRIE” start performances on Thursday, since each play, in very different ways, raises the same question: What took so long?

“My Name Is Rachel Corrie” is a solo drama based on e-mail messages and journal entries written by Ms. Corrie, an American demonstrator for Palestinian rights who was killed in Gaza by an Israeli bulldozer in 2003. The play has been at the center of one of the most furious controversies in the theater in years, even though few people in New York have seen it. The brouhaha began earlier this year after the New York Theater Workshop announced that it was delaying the play. Critics cried censorship, while representatives from the theater said it needed more time to “contextualize” the play. When “Rachel Corrie” begins performances at the Minetta Lane, we can finally see what the fuss is about. Previews begin Thursday; runs Oct. 15 to Nov. 19, 18 Minetta Lane, Greenwich Village, (212) 420-8000; $45 to $65.

— NY Times

By Andrew Ford Lyons
Orginally in The Palestine Chronicle

How quickly we backslide: In June of 1937 the federal government slapped chains and a padlock onto the doors of Maxine Elliot Theatre in New York. It was an attempt to halt a performance of “The Cradle Will Rock,” a Marc Blizstein musical the feds found far too full of dangerous ideas for public consumption. The show’s director, Orson Welles, rushed back from Washington, D.C., on opening day after a failed attempt to convince the government to lift its ban. He found about 600 people waiting to see the performance idling in front of the theater, along with his cast.

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