My Name is Rachel Corrie - Review

I thought this play was a worthy project. It was based on the journals of Rachel Corrie, the 23-year-old American woman killed by an Israeli bulldozer while protesting the destruction of a Palestinian settlement.

I recently watched this production (made famous in Toronto by the controversy caused when it was rejected by CanStage). Unfortunately, I was so excited to see this piece that I came up with a better play in my head as was disappointed by what I saw.

What I saw:
The first half of the play was terribly boring. I didn't know what was more painful: the relentless misfiring jokes or watching Corrie's life being ruthlessly pounded into the mold of "typical American girl". Her relationship with her parents was wonderfully sophisticated but so misunderstood. Corrie was being played below the intelligence of her dialogue. It's a one-woman show and while Bethany Jillard held her weight she had a tendency to shout her lines -like a high schooler who "turns on" their acting. This poor choiceto show youth (I hope it was a choice) was dropped for the second half of the play. Corrie talks about life in Rafah, the horrors of civilian lives amidst military conflict, and her resolution that she is doing good in the world. The play collapsed under the weight of its politically charged content. There's a lot of talk about it being a simple story about a passionate young girl in a mad mad world but it's clear that it's written to raise awareness of the suffering of Palestinian civilians as a result of the state of Israel's security policies. It's part tragedy and part journalism and it does neither effectively.

The play in my head:
My version is a story about the politics of youth: the mix of inspiring idealism and pathetic naivety -not the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

First: drop any pretense of fair representation of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and show Corrie at her most indignant and righteous. The play I saw was boring because it tried to remove her bias and show a safe, watered-down version of her politics. It was embarrassing that this tame play is considered controversial. She was a political radical. I want the audience to see and feel that.

Second: show a more realistic and flawed Rachel Corrie. I say this because, looking between the lines of the play, she struck me as an interesting outsider. Intelligent, passionate, and an introverted journal writer. She has no lasting friends in the play (other than her parents) and the only suggestion of an intimate relationship looks like it was based upon an exaggerated fantasy in her journal. I was very interested in the final video played. Who put those words in her mouth? How do so many children develop their "save the world" perspective?

Third: Show her to be naive, childish, and desperate. She's an American girl traveling abroad to

police the globe. Be honest. Her desire to save the world is rooted in her self-esteem and attempt to make friends (my bias is that human life is most often a struggle for the individual to be accepted by the group on their own terms). There's also an edge of wanting to be an exotic freedom fighter. I have spoken with many high school students with an imperial "I Must Save Africa" worldview. It provides a moral high ground in the hopes that others will look up to them (I have seen this backfire -striving to be an inspiring mini-Gandhis can push others away by making them feel guilty or inferior).

Fourth: Now that the audience has dismissed her as flawed and misguided, show her courage and the difference she makes. Whatever her flaws, Corrie took risks, made sacrifices, and stood up. She never resigned herself to thinking violence cannot be stopped. Maybe she's compensating for first world white guilt but what of it? She used her life to protect civilians in a conflict. There is a profound frustration in Corrie about the world we live in and wisdom in the awareness that we are the ones choose it. My play would leave audiences with the following feeling:

That girl was embarrassingly naive but what the f*ck have I done with my life? When did I give up? If the audience carried that sentiment into learning about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict then I would consider my work worthy.

When Werner Herzog's doc "Ballad of the Little Soldier" was accused of criticizing the Sandinista rebels (in the Nicaraguan conflict in the 1980s), he responded that he was not making a political film. He was trying to tell the story of child soldiers. My own view is that everything is political -everything is about power and choosing a side. But I prefer Herzog's approach to storytelling: listen to now and speak to forever.