Dear Rachel's Words friends and supporters:

We are very excited to inform you that "My Name is Rachel Corrie"  
will be opening in New York City in October, 2006! The details are in  
the New York Times article below. We are sure you will join us in  
welcoming the cast and crew, and we will keep you informed about  
ideas on how support this much-anticipated production.

Looking forward to a successful run,

Kathleeen Chalfant, Sally Eberhardt, Jen Marlowe,
Ann Petter, Brian Pickett, Dave Reed, Suzy Salamy, Tom Wallace
www.rachelswords.org
i...@rachelswords.org

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/22/theater/22corr.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Play About Gaza Death to Reach New York
By Campbell Robertson
The New York Times
June 22, 2006

After an Off Broadway production was derailed, resulting in a  
theatrical uproar, "My Name Is Rachel Corrie," the solo show about an  
American demonstrator for Palestinian rights who was killed by an  
Israeli bulldozer in the Gaza Strip, has found another New York theater.

Pam Pariseau and Dena Hammerstein, partners in James Hammerstein  
Productions, are bringing the play, critically acclaimed in London,  
to the Minetta Lane Theater in Greenwich Village. Previews are to  
begin on Oct. 5, with an opening scheduled for Oct. 15. The play is  
to run for 48 performances, closing on Nov. 19.

"We both saw the play and both responded to it very strongly," Ms.  
Hammerstein said in a telephone interview yesterday. "We identified  
with the material in terms of being mothers and were struck by the  
production and the theatricality."

Ms. Hammerstein, a daughter-in-law of Oscar Hammerstein II, is a  
longtime friend of the actor Alan Rickman, who created the play with  
Katharine Viner, an editor for The Guardian, the London newspaper.  
They put the play together from Ms. Corrie's journal entries and e-
mail messages before her death in March 2003. It ran for two seasons  
at the Royal Court Theater in London.

"I'm just really looking forward to engaging people on it, an  
engagement which can only happen, obviously, if the play is on," Ms.  
Viner said.

The play had originally been scheduled to start performances on March  
22 at the nonprofit New York Theater Workshop in the East Village.  
What happened next is a matter of debate.

James C. Nicola, its artistic director, said the workshop decided to  
postpone the show to the next season, as he later wrote in a letter  
to The Los Angeles Times, "when we discovered how deeply ingrained  
the attitudes were on all sides and what a marketing and  
contextualizing challenge this posed."

The Royal Court quickly issued a statement saying that the dates for  
the play had been definite, plane tickets to bring over the London  
cast and crew had been bought, and the production schedule had been  
finalized. Ms. Viner, in an opinion article in The Guardian, said she  
interpreted the workshop's action as a cancellation.

Artistic directors at other Off Broadway theaters took sides in the  
uproar. The playwrights Harold Pinter and Tony Kushner and the  
actress Vanessa Redgrave, known for her longtime support of  
Palestinian rights, criticized the workshop, the original home of  
"Rent" and Mr. Kushner's "Homebody/Kabul," saying it had caved in to  
political pressure.

The Royal Court quickly moved "Rachel Corrie" to the Playhouse  
Theater in the West End for a nine-week run that ended May 20.  
Several American theaters offered to put on the show, including the  
Seattle Repertory Theater, but the plan all along was to bring it to  
New York first.

"From the moment we read it, it's something that we've always wanted,  
to bring it to America," said Ewan Thomson, a spokesman for the Royal  
Court. "It feels like that's its rightful home, and we're obviously  
delighted that things are once again moving in that direction."

After reading the play, Ms. Hammerstein and Mr. Pariseau, associate  
producers of the current London production of "Sunday in the Park  
With George," attended a performance at the Playhouse in mid-April.

"We went out to dinner afterwards with a whole bunch of friends, and  
we talked about it for two hours," Ms. Pariseau said. "We responded  
to that and thought, 'God, it would be so amazing to present that Off  
Broadway so that New York theatergoers would have that same  
experience.' "

Mr. Rickman is to direct, as he did in London, and the producers are  
in negotiations to bring over Megan Dodds, who starred in the Royal  
Court production. In London the play did not generate much  
controversy; the debate seems to have been less about the play and  
more about the decision at the New York Theater Workshop, which has  
insisted all along that it never canceled "Rachel Corrie."

"Although the Royal Court and its collaborators have decided to  
produce 'My Name Is Rachel Corrie' commercially, the New York Theater  
Workshop is pleased to learn that New York audiences will have an  
opportunity to see this powerful play," Richard Kornberg, a spokesman  
for the workshop, said yesterday. "We're especially pleased that Dena  
Hammerstein is the producer because she produced in London one of the  
workshop's biggest hits, 'Dirty Blonde.' "

Neither Ms. Hammerstein nor Ms. Pariseau said they were concerned  
about inviting any kind of firestorm.

"On reading it, our initial thoughts were about the play and about  
her writing, and not about any of the controversy," Ms. Pariseau  
said. "Our hope is that people will form an opinion based on that, as  
opposed to all the other stuff surrounding it."