Revolution #70, November 26, 2006
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To all Revolution readers:
I want you to meet a curious, thoughtful, brave, funny, life-loving, life-engaging young woman. A sometimes anguishing, sometimes exuberant, almost always questing young woman who runs at life with her arms and eyes wide open.
I want you to travel with her and see things through her eyes—growing up in America, hanging out in a college town, and traveling to the Gaza Strip in occupied Palestine. I want you to hear her read her journal entries and listen to her letters home to her parents and I want you to hear her sing.
It’ll only take you 90 minutes to get to know her. She’ll make you laugh for sure, and get you angry, and you might cry some too. You may not agree with everything she says—I didn’t—but you won’t forget her any time soon.
Her name is Rachel Corrie. She was killed by the Israeli army when she stood in front of a bulldozer that was moving to demolish a Palestinian home—they buried her under a pile of dirt, and then rolled back over her. But somehow she seems to come to life each night at the Minetta Lane Theatre in New York City, in the play MY NAME IS RACHEL CORRIE—thanks to Alan Rickman and Katharine Viner who worked her journals into the stuff of drama, and a wonderful young actor named Megan Dodds, who played Rachel the night that I went. And thanks too to the Minetta Lane Theatre, who stood up after another “progressive” theater canceled on the play in the face of pressure from those who will brook no criticism of Israel, and who wanted to bury Rachel Corrie a second time. This time, they didn’t succeed.
So if you’re in New York or anywhere close, go meet Rachel Corrie. But make it quick, because she’s leaving soon.
Toby O’Ryan
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