Her place on the world stage

IT’S been three years since American college student and pro-Palestinian protester Rachel Corrie was killed beneath an Israeli army bulldozer, but her e-mails home are still starting arguments -- in London, where her writings have been transformed into a hit play; in New York, where a bid to stage that play has stalled amid controversy; and in Corrie’s native Pacific Northwest, where activists plan demonstrations, and another play, in coming days.

Corrie, a 23-year-old student from Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash., died March 16, 2003, crushed by a bulldozer while protesting Israeli government demolitions of Palestinian homes on the Gaza Strip. Corrie had been in the Middle East for about two months, living with Palestinian families and working for the Palestinian-led International Solidarity Movement, a nonviolent resistance group.

The idea of a show about her was born when British actor Alan Rickman read a series of her e-mails that had been reprinted in the Guardian newspaper, and he suggested a stage adaptation. The script grew from Rickman’s collaboration with Corrie’s parents and sister, along with the Guardian’s weekend magazine editor, Katharine Viner. The British production of “My Name Is Rachel Corrie,” a one-woman show directed by Rickman and starring American actress Megan Dodds, sold out one run last spring at the Royal Court Theatre and another in October. A third engagement at the Playhouse Theatre in London’s West End is to run from late March to early May.

But it’s the prospect of a New York run that has sparked the greatest controversy. James Nicola, artistic director of New York Theatre Workshop, laid plans to bring in the show beginning March 22, then deferred them -- a move that brought complaints from Rickman and Viner, who called it “censorship.” Petitions circulated on the Internet and activists proposed March 16 public readings of Corrie’s writings in Portland, Ore., and elsewhere. Tentative plans are in motion for a follow-up “performance event” in New York on March 22.

Nicola said he indefinitely delayed the play after discussion with friends and colleagues about tensions in New York over the play’s subject matter, especially in the wake of the victory of the militant group Hamas in recent Palestinian elections. His worry, he said in a statement, was the “very strong possibility that a number of factions, on all sides of a political conflict, would use the play as a platform to promote their own agendas.”

The idea of waiting, he said, “was to allow us enough time to contextualize the work so Rachel Corrie’s powerful voice could best be heard.”

The New York Theatre Workshop, a 188-seat venue in the East Village, has long been known for adventurous programming, including early productions of “Rent” and “Dirty Blonde,” as well as playwright Tony Kushner’s “Homebody/Kabul,” a study of Christian-Muslim cultural confusion that the theater premiered in 2001, less than four months after the 9/11 attacks.

But the workshop in New York isn’t the only theater group with a political bent that’s taken interest in the Rachel Corrie story. Since December, the Vermont-based Bread and Puppet Theater has been honing “Daughter Courage,” an 80-minute play about Corrie, also drawn from her letters, that premiered Wednesday night in Seattle.

The show, to run through Saturday at the Consolidated Works contemporary arts center, was directed by Bread and Puppet Theater founder Peter Schumann, whose own daughter visited the Palestinian territories a few years before Corrie and returned safely. It features eight puppeteers, dozens of puppets and about 50 volunteers. Corrie’s parents are expect to attend Saturday.

“It’s very humanitarian and, in a way, almost utopian in its conception,” said Corey Pearlstein, artistic director of Consolidated Works, who said he’s heard no hint of community unease about the production. “There’s not an anti-Israeli sentiment in the context of these dialogues. It’s just really about basic human rights and decency.”