Worlds collide in 'Corrie'

Actress brings grace and force to Mideast drama

Lisa Bornstein, Rocky Mountain News

Published November 2, 2007 at midnight

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The biggest challenge behind My Name Is Rachel Corrie is to approach it as a play. Myriad forces are working against you.

There's the press release from Countdown to Zero, the group producing it in Denver, which includes a production history, highlighting the two canceled productions (and 11 that went on).

The play, compiled by British journalist Katharine Viner and actor Alan Rickman from Corrie's diaries, traces the life of the Olympia, Wash., activist. She was killed in 2003, at the age of 23, by an Israeli Army bulldozer that crushed her skull as she protested the razing of a Palestinian home in the Gaza Strip.

An anonymous young woman the day before, she became an international figure upon her death, proclaimed a victim of the occupation and symbol of oppression by some Palestinians (and Palestinian supporters) and a witless pawn by some Israelis (and Israel supporters). Note I didn't use the words pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli, which assume that to be for one is to be against the other.

It's almost impossible for a theatrical production to escape the buzzing of opposing agendas, particularly when activists pass out DVDs in favor of their cause beforehand (more balanced are the after- show panel discussions). And when it's one that presents only one voice - Corrie's - it has a larger obstacle, that of presenting nuance and complexity. It's no one's job to present both sides of a story - in fact, that's a sure way to kill the drama - but because Corrie's is seen through only her eyes, we don't get much information beyond the anecdotal.

Julie Rada plays Corrie, beginning with the humor and high intensity of a young adolescent. She captures the winsome, precocious 12-year- old who wrote, "Everybody must feel safe." Her eyes are opened by a trip to Russia, her first view of the world, and she chafes at the limits of her hometown.

Perhaps the portrayal is limited by either what she wrote or what was selected, but the why of Corrie's arrival in Palestine is never clear. In college, she's an activist yearning for a cause, dying to help people, but the specifics of her mission seem plucked from opportunity.

Rada fills the stage by injecting it with physicality, moving with grace, then force, across Freeland's haiku of a set, a screened platform set in an oval of sand.

There is a looming sorrow at the knowledge of her impending death (one rudely interrupted by a strange comic interlude), but the play has one particularly disturbing element. Why, once again, is the story of an oppressed people being told through a white Westerner? My Name Is Rachel Corrie offers no memorable depictions of Palestinians. Why are we supposed to be sadder about her death than the deaths of nameless Palestinians, Israelis, Iraqis, Afghanis, Burmese and Indonesians? And why do we always assume that an English- speaking audience can't step far enough outside its comfort zone to identify with anyone else?

My Name Is Rachel Corrie

• Grade: B-

• When and where: 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays through Nov. 17, Bindery | space, 770 22nd St.

• Cost: $18 to $20

• Information: 720-221-3821

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