Censorship born out of fear

[Guest guest]

A message crushed again

Three years after American activist Rachel Corrie died under an Israeli

bulldozer in Gaza, her words are being censored for political reasons.

By Katharine Viner

March 1, 2006

 

THE FLIGHTS for cast and crew had been booked; the production schedule

delivered; there were tickets advertised on the Internet. The Royal

Court Theatre production of " My Name Is Rachel Corrie, " the play I

co-edited with Alan Rickman, was transferring later this month to the

New York Theatre Workshop, home of the musical " Rent, " following two

sold-out runs in London and several awards.

 

We always felt passionately that it was a piece of work that needed to

be seen in the United States. Created from the journals and e-mails of

American activist Rachel Corrie, telling of her journey from her

adolescence in Olympia, Wash., to her death under an Israeli bulldozer

in Gaza at the age of 23, we considered it a unique American story that

would have a particular relevance for audiences in Rachel's home country.

After all, she had made her journey to the Middle East in order " to meet

the people who are on the receiving end of our [American] tax dollars, "

and she was killed by a U.S.-made bulldozer while protesting the

demolition of Palestinian homes.

 

But last week the New York Theatre Workshop canceled the production —

or, in its words, " postponed it indefinitely. "

The political climate, we were told, had changed dramatically since the

play was booked. As James Nicola, the theater's 's artistic director,

said Monday, " Listening in our communities in New York, what we heard

was that after Ariel Sharon's illness and the election of Hamas in the

recent Palestinian elections, we had a very edgy situation. " Three years

after being silenced for good, Rachel was to be censored for political

reasons.

 

I'd heard from American friends that life for dissenters had been

getting worse — wiretapping scandals, arrests for wearing antiwar

T-shirts, Muslim professors denied visas.

But it's hard to tell from afar how bad things really are. Here was

personal proof that the political climate is continuing to shift

disturbingly, narrowing the scope of free debate and artistic

expression, in only a matter of weeks. By its own admission the

theater's management had caved in to political pressure.

Rickman, who also directed the show in London, called it " c, and the New

York Theatre Workshop, the Royal Court, New York audiences — all of us

are the losers. "

 

It makes you wonder. Rachel was a young, middle-class, scrupulously

fair-minded American woman, writing about ex-boyfriends, troublesome

parents and a journey of political and personal discovery that took her

to Gaza. She worked with Palestinians and protested alongside them when

she felt their rights were denied. But the play is not agitprop; it's a

complicated look at a woman who was neither a saint nor a traitor, both

serious and funny, messy and talented and human. Or, in her own words,

" scattered and deviant and too loud. " If a voice like this cannot be

heard on a New York stage, what hope is there for anyone else? The

non-American, the nonwhite, the oppressed, the truly other?

 

Rachel's words from Gaza are a bridge between these two worlds — and now

that bridge is being severed. After the Hamas victory, the need for

understanding is surely greater than ever, and I refuse to believe that

most Americans want to live in isolation. One night in London, an

Israeli couple, members of the right-wing Likud party on holiday in

Britain, came up after the show, impressed. " The play wasn't against

Israel; it was against violence, " they told Cindy Corrie, Rachel's mother.

 

I was particularly touched by a young Jewish New Yorker from an Orthodox

family who said he had been nervous about coming to see " My Name Is

Rachel Corrie " because he had been told that both she and the play were

viciously anti-Israel. But he had been powerfully moved by Rachel's

words and realized that he had, to his alarm, been dangerously misled.

 

The director of the New York theater told the New York Times on Monday

that it wasn't the people who actually saw the play he was concerned about.

 

" I don't think we were worried about the audience, " he said. " I think we

were more worried that those who had never encountered her writing,

never encountered the piece, would be using this as an opportunity to

position their arguments. "

 

Since when did theater come to be about those who don't go to see it? If

the play itself, as Nicola clearly concedes, is not the problem, then

isn't the answer to get people in to watch it, rather than exercising

prior censorship? George Clooney's outstanding movie " Good Night, and

Good Luck " recently reminded us of the importance of standing up to

witch hunts; one way to carry on that tradition would be to insist on

hearing Rachel Corrie's words — words that only two weeks ago were

deemed acceptable.

 

 

 

 

KATHARINE VINER is the features editor at the Guardian in London and the

editor, with Alan Rickman, of " My Name is Rachel Corrie, " which

premiered at the Royal Court Theatre in April 2005. Because of the

cancellation of the New York run, the play is transferring to the

Playhouse Theatre in London's West End.