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About Portland observer. (Portland, Or.) 1970-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 22, 2010)
Supporting Jefferson Acid Attack Lie Concerts to benefit music program See page 4 ‘Victim ' charged with theft See page 3 41 nscruer years »i community service Established in 1970 Committed to Cultural Diversity Volume XXXX, Num ber 37 www.portlandobscrver.com Wednesday • September 22, 2010 Idealism’s High Price Madeleine Rogers, a 16-year- old Junior at Grant High School, stars in ‘My Name is Rachel Corrie,’ a controversial play about an Ameri can woman who was killed during a protest in Gaza to protest the demolition of homes. photo by S teve B rian Activist’s death opens path to reconciliation, understanding L ee P erlman T he P ortland O bserver The theater becom es a venue to begin reconciliation and understanding in a con troversial show about a young wom an from the N orthw est who lost her life pro testing the treatm ent Palestinians in Gaza. Alan Rickman and Katharine Viner wrote the play, “My Nam e is Rachel C orrie,” to let the world know about C orrie’s life and her w ritings. A group from Portland, led by Jean Fitzgerald, Anne M cLaughlin, Bibi W alton and M egan Kate W ard, created both a theater and theater com pany to allow it to be shown in the city. Corrie, a student o f W ashington’s Ev ergreen State C ollege, w ent to Israel to do by hum anitarian work for Palestinian Arabs, In 2003, while engaged in a dem onstration in Gaza to protest the dem olition o f homes, she was accidentally run over by a bull dozer and killed. She was 24. w om an’s journals and e-m ails. Fitzgerald, M cLaughlin and W alton, having read the play, thought it was im portant enough that it should be shown locally. To me, this is just depicting (Corrie’s) experience there, not picking sides. She was acting out o f humanitarian motives and lived with the Palestinian people. - ««•«•" n»t« w«ni i Rickm an, an actor best known for his role as Severus Snape in the H arry Potter film s, w rote the play based on the young This turned out to be more difficult than they had thought. They ultim ately had to create a new theater com pany, the N orth west Classical Theater Company and Three Friends, and a theater, Stark Street The atre, ju st for this production. The theater was a vacant industrial building at 600 S.E. Stark St., last used as a ceramic tile factory, and leased for this production. The producers w ent to every local the ater space they could find and found that they were available, if at all, only at inaus picious tim es such as the holiday season. They also sought to have several theater com panies produce the play, without suc cess. Here the reasons were political as well as logistical: antagonism toward the subject m atter or fear o f such reaction by continued ' W on page 18