June 22, 2006
Play About Gaza Death to Reach New York
By CAMPBELL ROBERTSON
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.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/22/theater/22corr.html?pagewanted=print