My Name is Rachel Corrie
February 22nd 2010 02:27
:
Review | My Name is Rachel Corrie
Category: Reviews
There has been a great deal written about and reflected upon an American girl in her early 20's who travelled to Gaza only to die under a bulldozer.
My Name Is Rachel Corrie
AC Arts (TAFE SA)
Stables
39 Light Square
ADELAIDE
Until 13 March
for example this link takes you to Death of an Idealist:
The documentary Death of an Idealist* *Music Montage Trailer composed by Matt Scott for Channel 4 documentary Death of an Idealist about peace activist Rachel Corrie.
Hers was the first of a string of killings of westerners in Gaza in spring 2003, as the war was taking place in Iraq: Briton Tom Hurndall, 22, shot on April 11; another Briton, cameraman James Miller, 34, shot on May 16. She and Hurndall were activists in the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), an organisation set up to support Palestinian non-violent resistance to Israel's military occupation. Rachel was killed only two days before the start of the assault on Baghdad. Not long after appearing in the documentary Colin Reese, Corrie's ex-boyfriend committed suicide.
Alan Rickman and Katherine Viner were presented with almost 200 pages of raw material when they started to cobble a work together intended for the stage. Viner, a journalist and editor has written some interesting features about the process, and the consequent cancellation of the production in New York, after a successful if not controversial season in London. The death of an innocent, a cause celebre.
The stage production is one of those plays that sparked debate wherever it went to begin with, about an ever touchy subject; the death of an innocent in an impossible situation (impossible for the main protagonist to survive that is).
Productions in Australia don't necessarily generate the same controversy. A Sydney production 2005 was well received without much fuss. Australia is so far away from it all; and as one newly arrived refugee so eloquently put it why they drop bombs on Australia - Australia is multicultural - dropping bombs here is like dropping on your own people
Curiously when it comes to My Name is Rachel Corrie I find the main problem is the story surrounding the play has more tangible drama than the actual play, which ultimately makes it perilously difficult to deliver the further you are from the immediacy involved in that spark that set it ablaze as a production in the first instance.
The pitch of this play is relying on the sense of an audience who are compelled to want to believe that this young American woman has not died in vain; this is a worthy play. I do not say there is anything wrong in creating a worthy memorial to a figure who serves to reveal something of ourselves to us. I agree the subject is worthy but the story is a little too brittle and lacks a great deal of character depth or development.
I wonder if there were more influences realised on stage, more points of view, more characters? Along the lines of The Laramie Project, it may have a better chance of engaging an audience as a play about many of the people around Rachel Corrie not the character herself (or any little notes and letters she left).
The pitch for the production being what it is, we know the main character is going to die, and die while she is doing something political. The show starts and ends with thoughts and images from the child Rachel Corrie, not the woman who dies; sadly we never really get a satisfying development between the two in the play, so even though we hear blow by blow accounts of different experiences, including the death of a girl in a bomb attack, we never truly get under the surface of Corrie.
This production by Director/Producer Daniel Clarke presents well and uses some neat design elements to engender mood, place and political position. The agitprop elements of the production are not overemphasised in the design, yet make their presence felt.
Where the production fails to lift its weight is in the teasing out of Corrie.
The great trap of creating something worthy is the potential it has of having all the passion of a university lecture scant on emotional development and unengaging. I think this production lacks emotional development; it has some of the characteristics of Brecht but not the emotional intensity, muscularity or musicality; it is yet another illustrated monologue but lacking the finesse of What I Heard About Iraq or the humanity of The Laramie Project.
The journalistic text seems to elicit a declamatory, unemotional performance; as though we are seeing a presentation that is required to comply with the wishes of the parents who provided all the raw material in the first instance of developing the play. There is something missing on an emotional level; and yet it is a worthy play. I was not emotionally engaged enough to feel much for Rachel Corrie.
An intellectual feel good work of great dignity and courage.
David Jobling
My Name Is Rachel Corrie
AC Arts (TAFE SA)
Stables
39 Light Square
ADELAIDE
Until 13 March
for example this link takes you to Death of an Idealist:
Hers was the first of a string of killings of westerners in Gaza in spring 2003, as the war was taking place in Iraq: Briton Tom Hurndall, 22, shot on April 11; another Briton, cameraman James Miller, 34, shot on May 16. She and Hurndall were activists in the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), an organisation set up to support Palestinian non-violent resistance to Israel's military occupation. Rachel was killed only two days before the start of the assault on Baghdad. Not long after appearing in the documentary Colin Reese, Corrie's ex-boyfriend committed suicide.
Alan Rickman and Katherine Viner were presented with almost 200 pages of raw material when they started to cobble a work together intended for the stage. Viner, a journalist and editor has written some interesting features about the process, and the consequent cancellation of the production in New York, after a successful if not controversial season in London. The death of an innocent, a cause celebre.
The stage production is one of those plays that sparked debate wherever it went to begin with, about an ever touchy subject; the death of an innocent in an impossible situation (impossible for the main protagonist to survive that is).
Productions in Australia don't necessarily generate the same controversy. A Sydney production 2005 was well received without much fuss. Australia is so far away from it all; and as one newly arrived refugee so eloquently put it why they drop bombs on Australia - Australia is multicultural - dropping bombs here is like dropping on your own people
Curiously when it comes to My Name is Rachel Corrie I find the main problem is the story surrounding the play has more tangible drama than the actual play, which ultimately makes it perilously difficult to deliver the further you are from the immediacy involved in that spark that set it ablaze as a production in the first instance.
The pitch of this play is relying on the sense of an audience who are compelled to want to believe that this young American woman has not died in vain; this is a worthy play. I do not say there is anything wrong in creating a worthy memorial to a figure who serves to reveal something of ourselves to us. I agree the subject is worthy but the story is a little too brittle and lacks a great deal of character depth or development.
I wonder if there were more influences realised on stage, more points of view, more characters? Along the lines of The Laramie Project, it may have a better chance of engaging an audience as a play about many of the people around Rachel Corrie not the character herself (or any little notes and letters she left).
The pitch for the production being what it is, we know the main character is going to die, and die while she is doing something political. The show starts and ends with thoughts and images from the child Rachel Corrie, not the woman who dies; sadly we never really get a satisfying development between the two in the play, so even though we hear blow by blow accounts of different experiences, including the death of a girl in a bomb attack, we never truly get under the surface of Corrie.
This production by Director/Producer Daniel Clarke presents well and uses some neat design elements to engender mood, place and political position. The agitprop elements of the production are not overemphasised in the design, yet make their presence felt.
Where the production fails to lift its weight is in the teasing out of Corrie.
The great trap of creating something worthy is the potential it has of having all the passion of a university lecture scant on emotional development and unengaging. I think this production lacks emotional development; it has some of the characteristics of Brecht but not the emotional intensity, muscularity or musicality; it is yet another illustrated monologue but lacking the finesse of What I Heard About Iraq or the humanity of The Laramie Project.
The journalistic text seems to elicit a declamatory, unemotional performance; as though we are seeing a presentation that is required to comply with the wishes of the parents who provided all the raw material in the first instance of developing the play. There is something missing on an emotional level; and yet it is a worthy play. I was not emotionally engaged enough to feel much for Rachel Corrie.
An intellectual feel good work of great dignity and courage.
David Jobling
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David Jobling
