Review By Élise C. Hanson, Front Row Reviewers
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In March of 2003, a 23-year-old American woman named Rachel Corrie was killed by a bulldozer in Rafah while protesting the demolition of Palestinian homes. The 2005 play My Name is Rachel Corrie, devised and edited by journalist Katharine Viner and actor Alan Rickman, uses excerpts from Corrie’s journal and emails to create an illustration of the peaceful protestor’s inner life in its final few months. The play is a one-actor piece, and ThreePenny Theatre Company, utilizing the direction of Hannah Orr, showcased an intimate staging in the Utah Arts Alliance Sister Dottie Dixon Memorial Black Box this summer.
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In the role of Corrie was Viviane Turman, an actor and activist whose bio included Turman’s plight narrowly avoiding a life sentence for graffiti when they and others protested the unlawful death of Bernardo Palacios-Carbajal. The notion of having one activist depict another was certainly not lost in the portrayal. Turman spoke from their chest, giving Corrie a plaintive voice some 20 years after the anguishing event that took her life. Turman’s gift for vibrant, sunny humor and humanity punched through the sinewy, difficult story with enormous presence that was as captivating as it was honest. Such was the strength of Turman’s performance that it rattled through a sharp, winding work and delivered something truly affecting.
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Orr wrote in her director’s note that Corrie was “not a mythological figure beyond our reach or comprehension. She was a girl from Olympia with a messy room and a love for art who sought to reconcile her actions with the harm being done in her name, funded by her tax dollars. … [her story] calls upon us to understand and grapple with the space we occupy within a global context.” Through the lens of Corrie’s death, the script, which could follow the familiar pattern of canonizing a person who died far too young, cuts to the bone of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in a modern, deeply human, and reachable way. Corrie gets concerned emails from her parents. She acknowledges that she could leave at any point. She doesn’t think she’s doing anything the Palestinians couldn’t do themselves. The idealistic, hopeful nature of youth runs through the base of the story, and it is a hope all people can relate to.
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My Name is Rachel Corrie tracks as a confidence between character and audience, a perceptive dialogue on ethical philosophy and political economy that is never weighed down but pierces through to get to the sharp fervor of what it is attempting to examine. It would be easy for those (unlike me, who has Palestinian siblings and nephews and could not stop shaking and sobbing through the latter half of the play), to absorb the even more lengthy polemics of the production from a point of intellectual detachment, and that to me is a master stroke of writing and depiction. After all, Rachel is just a girl, as optimistic as she is embittered, as world-wise as she is utterly guileless. The play sidesteps the natural desire to romanticize a figure such as Corrie at the same moment it leaves you with endless questions and reflections battering around in the walls of your mind.
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In its short presence in Salt Lake City, ThreePenny Theatre Company has proven a place for thoughtful, deliberate art that probes the tapestry of humanity. This latest offering, now closed, is the latest in what has been a small but potent presence in our theatre community. It is my belief that lovers of theatre and great storytelling done by earnest and capable people ought investigate this company’s further endeavors.
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