Seattle Rep. to Present Rachel Corrie as Part of Its 2006-2007 Season

Seattle Repertory Theatre will mount the controversial play My Name is Rachel Corrie. The show will run at the regional house from March 15, 2007 through April 22, 2007.

My Name is Rachel Corrie centers on the title character, a 23-year-old Evergreen College graduate and Olympia, Washington native who went to the Gaza Strip to aid Palestinians whose homes were being destroyed in the conflict with Israel. In March of 2003, she was killed by an Israeli bulldozer. The words in My Name is Rachel Corrie were taken from Corrie's own journals and letters. Alan Rickman and journalist Katharine Viner assembled the text.

My Name is Rachel Corrie premiered at London's Royal Court Theatre last year. It recently made press in America when off-Broadway's New York Theatre Workshop, which had never officially announced the play as part of its season, decided not to present the work. "In the less than two months we had to mount the proposed production of the Royal Court's My Name is Rachel Corrie, we found that there was a strong possibility that a number of factions, on all sides of a political conflict, could use the production as a platform for their own agendas. We were not confident that we had the time to create an environment where the art could be heard independent of the political issues associated with it," NYTW Artistic Director Jim Nicola said in a statement at the time. The Royal Court production of My Name is Rachel Corrie will begin performances on March 28 at the West End's Playhouse Theatre.

As part of its 2006-2007, the Seattle Rep. will also present John Patrick Shanley's Doubt, a new stage version of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, Edward Albee's The Lady from Dubuque, Randal Myler and Dan Wheetman's Fire on the Mountain, August Wilson's Gem of the Ocean, Will Eno's Thom Pain based on nothing, Kathleen Tolan's Memory House and Tanya Barfield's Blue Door.