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