Production of “My Name is Rachel Corrie”

My Name is Rachel Corrie, a play that has become a flash point for opposing feelings about the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land, will be performed in Ephraim and Baileys Harbor this month.

The Door County performances will feature former Baileys Harbor resident Brittany Jordt, the daughter of Martha Scully Beller, now of Sturgeon Bay, in the title role.

The play is based on a remarkable collection of writings by Corrie, a 23-year-old American peace activist from Olympia, Washington who was crushed to death by an Israeli Army bulldozer in Rafah, a Palestinian town on the border between Egypt and the Gaza Strip. Corrie was a volunteer with the International Solidarity Movement, a group of Palestinians and ‘internationals’ who tried to use nonviolence in the mold of Mahatma Gandhi and the U.S. civil rights movement to stop human rights abuses by the Israeli army in occupied Palestine. She was trying to prevent the demolition of a Palestinian pharmacist’s home when she was killed.

Several eyewitnesses called her death a deliberate act of murder; the Israeli government insists that it was a tragic accident and blames Corrie for her own death. The U.S. government has refused to investigate.

Soon after Corrie’s death, many of her e-mails from Gaza to her family were published in the British newspaper The Guardian. They caught the eye of British actor Alan Rickman, who obtained more of Corrie’s writings. Rickman and Katherine Viner, a journalist with The Guardian, wove these writings into a one-woman play: My Name is Rachel Corrie.

The play will begin at 8 pm on Friday and Saturday, July 25 and 26 at the Ephraim Village Hall, 9996 Water Street. On Sunday, July 27 at 2 pm, it will be performed at the Bailey’s Harbor Town Hall, 2392 County F. Tickets are $7 and $3 for students. For more information email [email protected] or call 608.278.0483.