Why didn't Corrie have security like Democrat politicians and reporters have when they are in Iraq?
Are Politician's and reporter's lives more important?

__________________
Drill offshore now

There were never as many journalists and peace
workers killed as in the conflict Israelo-Palestine.
Most of killers were done by Israelis since they
do not like witnesses for the way they act.

This is the reason why Israel doesn"t want peacekeepers.

N.B. Many reporters refuse to work in the M.E.
Robert Fisk has risked his life a few times.

I see.
Send young kids to do your fighting in a war zone, offer them no protection and when they are killed, blame Israel and claim the kid to be a hero.
Corrie's family should sue the hell out of the Liberal organization that sent her to a war zone with no protection.

__________________
Drill offshore now

You mean it is not a war but a guerrilla ...more dangerous than a war.
I agree on this.
But Rachel wasn"t alone...
A pacifist organization does not have bodygards.
Ghandy ,the indian,pacifist did not have bodygards.

I read in an Israeli newspaper that the
majority of Israelis ,for peace,agree to abbandon
the territories and find a way to have the real peace.

Iran is a pandora box...what she has as arms is
a question mark.
She can use them only against Israel...

Me personally I wouldn"t live in Israel......

Rachel....we never forget you.

What an idiot.

With a nick name like yours.....God Save America and the Palestinian Children.

By Artist By Keyword By Track By Album By Composer By Videos By Lyrics By Playlists
Search
Sign In My AccountHelp Home My Music
My Rhapsody My Playlists My Library Playlist Central Channels Videos How It Works
What Is Rhapsody Devices Membership Plans Rhapsody FAQ New Features Learn More About Rhapsody


Free Music: Subliminable Messages by Ten Foot Pole - Rhapsody Online



Rachel Corrie




Rachel Corrie
Welcome to Rhapsody Online! To launch this music, click the button below:

Play Music







Already have the Rhapsody Jukebox?
We haven't detected a Rhapsody Jukebox installed on your system. If this is a mistake, click here to play this music in your Rhapsody Jukebox.











Devices
Check out the Rhapsody MP3 players
Take Rhapsody with you on a portable playerSoftware
Download the Rhapsody Music SoftwareNeed Help?
Visit our Help Center

Unlimited Music|Burn to CD|Rhapsody Software|Portable Players|Home Audio|Redeem Coupon
Privacy PolicyTerms of UseSoftware LicenseAdvertiseJobsAffiliatesRhapsody Web ServicesSitemapHelpfilm.comReal GuideRhapsody on Facebook
- Portions of Album Content Provided by All Music Guide © 2008 All Media Guide, LLC.
© 2001-2008 Listen.com, a subsidiary of RealNetworks

The Play's the Thing
By WALTER A. DAVIS



I have heard that guilty creatures sitting at a play
Have by the very cunning of the scene
Been struck so to the soul that presently
They have proclaimed their malefactions

Hamlet, 2.2, lines 566-569



There is nothing political in American Literature.

Laura Bush



I. Theatre as a Social Institution

(Let me here express my thanks to Christopher Shinn for reading this essay in drafts and discussing it with me.)

The purpose of serious theatre can be stated simply-to challenge the audience to examine everything that they don't want to face about themselves and their world. Theatre is that public space with a unique purpose: the public airing of secrets. Other public institutions (Churches, Political forums, the Media) are dedicated primarily to something else: the celebration and perpetuation of ideology, the programming of a mass audience with the beliefs, ideas, and feelings they need to internalize so that ideology will secure its grand function. That function: the creation within subjects of the conditions that make it impossible for them to understand their historical situation. Freedom, if there is such a thing, depends on overcoming the vast weight of ideological beliefs that have colonized one's heart and mind.

The artist is the bad conscience of a society who calls ideology into question by representing all the ways in which it poisons our lives. The role of serious drama is to represent the disorders of its time not in order to relieve or "cathart" our dilemmas but to make it impossible for us to any longer ignore them. Rilke's "You must change your life" is the "message" that any great drama delivers as a blow to the psyche of its audience. To appropriate a phrase from Albee, the purpose of serious drama is to "get the guests." And not I add primarily by getting them to change their ideas about some current political and social situation. Serious drama strikes much deeper. It is an attempt to assault and astonish the heart, to get at the deepest disorders and springs of our psychological being, in order to affect a change in the very way we feel about ourselves-and consequently about everything else. Going to the theatre can be a dangerous act. One risks discovering things one doesn't want to know about oneself in a way that makes it impossible to remain the person one ways before a play eradicated one's defenses and shattered one's identity.

To get the full brunt of this argument the category of the political with respect to drama should not be conceived narrowly. Serious drama since Aeschylus has focused primarily on the family because the family is that social institution in which the contradictions of a society are lived out as the psychological conflicts tearing apart the relationships of those who should love one another. The family is the primary agent of ideological transmission, the process whereby it becomes an internalized psyche. It is also where all the contradictions and conflicts rise to the surface. To dramatize the truth of the family is to reveal the truth of a world. And thus among the classics of political theatre: The Oresteia, Hamlet, King Lear, Ghosts, Three Sisters, Death of a Salesman, Buried Child.

I have developed this theory of drama at length elsewhere. [1] It serves here as prelude to what I want to say about the recent actions of the NewYork Theatre Workshop in canceling (or "postponing" as is now claimed) plans to produce the play My Name is Rachel Corrie and what this event reveals about our historical situation. As an actor, playwright, and cultural critic I am particularly concerned about this event. But I also hope to show that it reveals *with uncommon clarity-the new ideological situation that defines post 9-11 Amerika.



II. The Only Thing We Have to Fear

Just the facts. The play My Name is Rachel Corrie was developed in the U.K. by Alan Rickman and Katherine Viner. Every word of it is derived from writings and tape recordings of the late peace activist Rachel Corrie who was killed on March 16, 2003 when crushed by an Israeli army bulldozer while trying to prevent the destruction of the home of a Palestian doctor in the Al-Salaam neighborhood of Rafah city in the south portion of the Gaza strip. Ms. Corrie was clearly visible to the driver of the bulldozer who ran over her and then backed up over her body. She was 23 years old. (For some readers the above sentences identify me as a foe of the State of Israel, an Anti-Semite, and even a supporter of terrorism. On which see section IV below.)

The play based on Rachel Corrie's life had an extremely successful run last year at London's Royal Court Theatre. Plans for a production of the work at the NYTW beginning March 22 were well advanced when the Artistic Director of that Theatre, James Nicola, announced on Feb. 27th that he had decided to "postpone" the production indefinitely. Mr. Nicola's reasons for this decision-which have evolved over the past few days from naïve frankness to semantic obfuscation-are well worth examining because of all that they reveal both about the state of supposedly serious theatre today and the impact of ideological and religious pressures. Which no longer have to speak in order to be heard and obeyed.

As always contextualization is essential to understanding. The NYTW is an Off Broadway Theatre that prides itself on producing challenging and controversial material. Here is what it says about its special interests in the latest issue of Dramatists Sourcebook, the publication playwrights consult to determine where to submit their work. "Special interests: exploration of political and historical events and institutions that shape contemporary life." [2] NYTW in short is atypical. Indeed, it proudly identifies itself as one of the few places left where radical, challenging works will gain a hearing. It thus claims independence from those factors that force theatres on Broadway and throughout the U.S. to eschew controversial and challenging material. Three reasons inform the a priori decision that consigns most American theatres to mediocrity and conformity. First, the general ideological assumption that any play one attends should be easier to digest than the fancy diner one ate an hour before. Talk to most people today about theatre or film and the first thing they want to be assured about is that the work won't contain anything troubling. Art can only have one purpose--Entertainment, the relieving of life's cares and woes. Second, any theatre that consistently produces challenging material soon finds that corporate sponsorship and season ticket sales have dried up. The powers that be insist that theatre is another one of the things that they own, an institution that must support and celebrate ideological beliefs, especially about the irrelevance of art to anything but entertainment. Third, we in the theatre have ourselves forgotten what serious theatre is. Much written and produced under that label is no such thing. The reputation of NYTW as a cutting edge theatre is a case in point. A study of their Seasons from 1995 to the present provides a good index of how little is radical or challenging in theatres that try to carve out that identity for themselves as their part of the theatrical pie. NYTW has given us some of Caryl Churchill's fine work, but it has also given us Rent, Dirty Blonde and a number of other plays that are hardly radical or controversial. This third factor is the the most revealing aspect of the NYTW fiasco. Mr Nicola is, supposedly, a serious director with his finger on the pulse of controversial, radical theatre. That is why the explanations he offers for his decision are so revealing not just as signs of bad judgment in this case but of systemic problems facing the possibility of serious theatre in America today.


III. Thus Spake Nicola

Mr. Nicola now insists that the whole thing is the result of a semantic confusion (and the intemperate response of Mr. Rickman who did not appreciate what he termed "censorship.") Moreover, in hopes everything will blow away efforts are now underway to patch things up with the Royal Court Theatre in London so that NYTW can secure the chance