My Name Is Rachel Corrie
My Name Is Rachel Corrie
By Alan Rickman and Katherine Viner
Directed by John DiDonna and Emily Killian
Starring Rebekah Lane
Empty Spaces Theater Company
Lowndes Shakespeare Center, Orlando Fla</strong>
I’ll vouch for this: Empty Spaces Theatre gives excellent value for money spent. Tonight one ticket gave entrance to two distinctly different shows by two different casts and two different endings.
Let’s begin with the headliner: “My Name Is Rachel Corrie.” Rachel (Lane) comes from an Auntie Mame household of strong, eccentric women who train even more eccentric daughters. She gets an early taste of travel and local activism in the Olympic peninsula, but it feels empty – after all, this is where all the activists end up, and she yearns for more virgin opportunity. Leaving her deeply symbolic bed sheets for the artfully damaged cinder blocks of the Gaza strip, she exits Stage Middle East. There she meets some friendly Palestinians, wonders at the amount of lead in the air and experiences the skill the Israeli Defense Force as it uses M-16 ammunition to control crowds like Scottish shepherds use whistles to direct their collies. Her cause now centers on Israel building a 40 foot wall along the border to intimidate and corral the Palestinians by conveniently putting it through their living rooms and gardens. Rachel writes and emails furiously only to be crushed by a bulldozer thus instantly becoming a lightning rod for all parties to the conflict. She’s almost an inverse suicide bomber.
The play is presented as a monolog with a dash of multimedia, and rambles along for an hour and a half testing Ms. Lane’s vocal chords and our bladders. Lane makes Rachel loveable and human if slightly prone to saving every cat in the neighborhood. She’s a seeker and a traveler, never happy with the world and its most recent distemper and bound to fix the problem through sheer force of will. Yet this play leaves more questions asked than answered – who is she representing in Gaza? What is she hoping to accomplish, and are there really just five “internationals” on station who think they can change world policy? At this point more humane productions would let us take a break, yet I still waited for something to happen that would make anyone want to stop this production for any reason worse than chronic verbosity. Suddenly the writer allows us something to rally around: Rachel realizes that US policy and US weapons and US money fuels this war, and By Golly, That’s Just Wrong! Then she gets bulldozed. Some people, it seems, are just born to martyrdom.
Act Two had much more spark if equally as many words. Producer DiDonna gave a little explanatory subtext and introduced Sue Thompson, a photographer with a beautiful display of West Bank photographs. She explained her enlightenment on the “Palestinian Issue” and the emotional impact of the children she meets and hopes to save with her Kodachrome. Next up was Irene, a woman on a spiritual journey that she hopes leads to public office. She spoke out against the conflict and US policy, along with her fear of government cyberbots. A lively discussion with the audience followed and contributors (including myself) offered opinions ranging from distanced resignation to fervent rhetoric to personal stories from the area in question. DiDonna’s opening question of “How closely must art hew to the truth?” received a thorough digestion, and we all left with that great feeling of having given the room a Good What For. Nobody was injured, no one got out of their chair without being asked, and we were all invited to the Arab American Festival this weekend at Lake Eola. Nothing like making up over a good falafel.
For more information on Empty Spaces Theater Company, visit http://www.emptyspacestheatre.org
For more information on Rachel Corrie, use your favorite search engine, and read multiple sites. WARNING: This is a Hot Button Topic in some circles. </em>
