About the Play:

My Name is Rachel Corrie is a full-length dramatic monologue adapted by actor and director Alan Rickman and journalist Katharine Viner from the intense and the poetic journals, letters, and emails of Rachel Corrie. When a young writer's growing knowledge of world events leads her to nonviolent activism and human rights observation in the Gaza strip, she witnesses first hand the personal experiences of the people behind the news headlines. My Name is Rachel Corrie boldly poses the question: what do we owe the rest of humanity?

My Name is Rachel Corrie is the moving account of the life and early death of a young female activist from Washington State, adapted from her own writings. On March 16, 2003, Rachel Corrie, a twenty-three-year-old American, was crushed to death by an Israeli Army bulldozer in Gaza as she was trying to prevent the demolition of a Palestinian home. My Name is Rachel Corrie is a one-woman play composed from Rachel's own journals, letters and emails – creating a portrait of a messy, articulate, Salvador Dali-loving chain-smoker (with a passion for the music of Pat Benatar), who left her home and school in Olympia, Washington, to work as an activist in the heart of Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In the three sold-out London runs since its Royal Court premiere, the piece has been surrounded by both controversy and impassioned proponents, and it has raised an unprecedented call to support political work and the difficult discourse it creates.

My Name is Rachel Corrie premiered in 2005 at London's Royal Court Theatre where it became the fastest sold-out show in that theatre's 50-year history, with nightly lines outside the box office of people seeking tickets. Three sold-out runs in London, including a West End transfer, were followed by a New York production. The play has now been performed in 20 countries, including Israel, and been translated into 12 languages.

Cast: 1 woman

What people say:

"An impassioned eulogy…it's hard not to be impressed – and also somewhat frightened – by the description of her as a two-year-old looking across Capitol Lake in Washington state and announcing, 'This is the wide world, and I'm coming to it." — New York Times

"The play shrewdly does not show Corrie dying; it shows her living, in all her funny, lively, melancholy, and manipulative immediacy…Her words bear witness to the deracinating madness of war, a hysteria that infects not only those doing the fighting but also those ambitious to do the saving." — The New Yorker

"Here is a play where the real dialogue begins when the curtain comes down. My Name is Rachel Corrie is theater that not only stirs our hearts but sticks in our heads." — Newsweek

"You feel you have not just had a night at the theatre: You have encountered an extraordinary woman [in this] stunning account of one woman's passionate response…theatre can't change the world. But what it can do, when it's as good as this, is to send us out enriched by other people's passionate concern." — The Guardian (UK)

"Extraordinary power…funny, passionate, bristling with idealism and luminously intelligent." — Time Out (London)

About the Playwright:

Alan Rickman (1946-2016) was a much-loved and most warmly admired English actor and director, known to millions around the world for his role as Professor Snape in the Harry Potter films. He co-adapted My Name Is Rachel Corrie and directed all three London productions, as well as its New York debut at Minetta Lane. A member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, and frequent star of the London and New York stages, he also portrayed characters in dozens of memorable films.

Katharine Viner became the first female Editor-in-Chief in the 195-year history of The Guardian, when she assumed the helm in 2015. She joined The Guardian as a writer in 1997, later becoming designated deputy editor of The Guardian as well as launching the award-winning Guardian Australia in 2013, and acting as Editor-in-Chief of Guardian US, based in New York. She is listed as one of Forbes 100 most powerful women. She created My Name is Rachel Corrie in collaboration with Alan Rickman.