My Name is Rachel Corrie

January 10th - 12th, 2014 @ Des Moines Onstage

Rachel Corrie is portrayed by Emily Stavneak

Directed by David A. VanCleave  &  Produced by Dr. Maria C. Filippone

Stage Manager: Sam Bates-Norum

Graphic Designer: Tanner Wetzel

Free Will Offering with a Suggested Donation of $15.00 per ticket.

Tickets are also available at the door.  General Admission Seating.

ALL proceeds will be donated to the Rachel Corrie Foundation.

On March 16, 2003, Rachel Corrie, a twenty-three- year-old American, was crushed to death by an Israeli Army bulldozer in Gaza as she was trying to prevent the demolition of a Palestinian home. My Name is Rachel Corrie is a one-woman play composed from Rachel’s own journals, letters, and emails—creating a portrait of a messy, articulate, Salvador Dali-loving chain-smoker (with a passion for the music of Pat Benatar), who left her home and school in Olympia, Washington, to work as an activist in the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Rachel’s Words in Print

Rachel was a gifted writer and observer. Following her death, her emails from Palestine received world-wide attention and inspired many people. Those emails, and other pieces she wrote during her life, were turned into a theatrical play titled “My Name Is Rachel Corrie” and later published in a book titled Let Me Stand Alone.

MY NAME IS RACHEL CORRIE

Edited by Alan Rickman and Katharine Viner.

My Name Is Rachel Corrie

Directed by Rickman, My Name is Rachel Corrie enjoyed great success in London when it opened at the Royal Court Theatre in April 2005 and when it returned for an encore engagement in October 2005. In the spring of 2006, after the New York Theater Workshop halted production amidst controversy, the play moved to London’s West End for nine weeks at the Playhouse Theatre and also reached prominent summer theater festivals in Galway and Edinburgh. In addition to the Best Actress award, the play received the 2006 London Theatregoers’ Choice Award for Best Play and Best Director and garnered nominations for a Time Out Award for Best Actress, a South Bank Show Award for Best Production, and an Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement. London actress Josephine Taylor was nominated for “Best Solo Show” at the Edinburgh Fringe, a sixty year old arts festival and the world’s largest.

Diane Borger, general manager of The Royal Court Theatre in London said, “It has been a full time job to handle the number of requests that have come my way to produce this play around the world, even more so following the success of the New York production. It is a testament to the power and truth of this play that inquiries have come in from both Israel and Palestine. That is everything that Rachel Corrie was about.”

Megan Dodds, whose performance as Rachel Corrie received the London Theatregoers’ Choice Award for Best Actress, opened the show in New York. The part has been played more recently by Bree Elrod, Kerry Bishe and Marya Sea Kaminski. “One unexpected gift has been to witness the opportunity this role has given these outstanding, young, female actresses. I believe this would please Rachel,” said Cindy Corrie, Rachel’s mother.

My Name is Rachel Corrie touches on Rachel’s life from early days in Olympia, Washington, where she grew up, through her experiences as an activist in Gaza.

Ben Brantley of The New York Times said “Rachel Corrie’s sense of the world gone so awry that it forces her to question her ‘fundamental belief in the goodness of human nature’ is sure to strike sadly familiar chords.” Cathleen McGuigan of Newsweek exclaimed, “Here is a play where the real dialogue begins when the curtain comes down.

My Name is Rachel Corrie is theater that not only stirs our hearts but sticks in our heads.” Elysa Gardner of USA Today calls My Name is Rachel Corrie, “Deeply, authentically human. If Rachel Corrie’s views provoke emotions and inspire debate, isn’t that part of the purpose of art?”

LET ME STAND ALONE

Visit the book website: letmestandalone.com.Published by W.W. Norton & Company

Let Me Stand Alone: The Journals of Rachel Corrie

One young woman’s voice – intense and poetic – grapples with universal ideas as it chronicles a personal journey cut short.

How do we find our way in the world? How do our actions affect others? What do we owe the rest of humanity? These are the timeless questions so eloquently posed by Rachel Corrie, a young American activist killed on March 16, 2003, as she tried to block the demolition of a Palestinian family’s home in the Gaza Strip. She was twenty-three years old.

Let Me Stand Alone reveals Corrie’s striking gifts as a poet and writer while telling her story in her own words, from her earliest reflections to her final e-mails. Her writing brings to life all that it means to come of age—a dawning sense of self, a thirst for one’s own ideals, and an evolving connection to others, near and far. Corrie writes about the looming issues of her time as well as the ordinary angst of an American teen, all with breathtaking passion, compassion, insight, and humor. Her writing reverberates with conviction and echoes her long-held belief in the oneness of humanity: “We have got to understand that they dream our dreams, and we dream theirs.”