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