Erin Preston

Denver actress Julie Rada portrays a young American activist in "My Name is Rachel Corrie," which will be staged this weekend at at Out ch'Yonda. The play, based on a true story, reveals the human side of a young woman who died in front of an Israeli bulldozer in the Gaza Strip.

Erin Preston

Julie Rada tried to cut through the heated controversy surrounding the death of Rachel Corrie to find the heart and spirit behind the headlines. "I feel we could have been friends, that I could have been her confidante," Rada said of Corrie.

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So much of the brief life of American activist Rachel Corrie is shadowed by controversy.

About the only thing not in dispute is that she was killed on March 16, 2003, in the Gaza Strip while trying to stop what she believed was an attempt by an Israeli bulldozer to demolish a Palestinian family's home. She was just weeks shy of her 24th birthday.

But was her death cold-blooded murder or a tragic accident?

Was the bulldozer that caused her death attempting to destroy houses or to scrape up shrubbery suspected of concealing tunnels used for weapons smuggling?

Did the bulldozer run down Corrie or was she killed by debris it had unearthed?

There are more answers than questions.

In its October/November 2003 issue, Mother Jones, an independent magazine committed to social justice, wrote that "the facts of Rachel Corrie's death dissolved into a half-dozen competing versions of the truth, none of them fully convincing."

What happened in those six to seven seconds just before Corrie died in front of the bulldozer?

Denver actress Julie Rada doesn't know.

But she has a good grip on who Corrie was before that — she has, in fact, become, as much as is possible, Corrie herself.

Rada, 28, stars in the play, "My Name is Rachel Corrie," which is, of course, controversial.

"I've played a lot of characters that were fictional or so far removed from reality that they were representational," Rada said during a phone interview from Denver. "With Rachel, I, at first, got anal-retentive accurate, got hooked on how accurate to be historically."

Rada soon realized that portraying Corrie from the outside-in was not the way to go. For one thing, the actress doesn't physically resemble the activist. Rada had to play Corrie from the inside-out.

"I had to get at what was essential about this person," Rada said. "And that was her big, big heart. She just felt the world. And also her humor and her maturity beyond her years."

"My Name is Rachel Corrie" is based on Corrie's diary entries and e-mails as well as e-mails from her parents to her, so Rada got to know the young activist through Corrie's own words — 52 pages of monologue to be precise.

"She was a passionate, insightful, messy person who was an incredible writer," Rada said. "I got to experience her heart, her humor, her compassion and her sensitivity to her environment. She was a young woman who wanted to save the world."

As she rehearsed her role and researched Corrie, Rada began to identify with the living, breathing person behind her character.

"We were pretty much the same age — less than a year apart," she said. "We both went to small, weird, esoteric colleges; Rachel in Washington (state), me in Boulder. I feel that we could have been friends, that I could have been her confidante."

Katherine Viner and English actor Alan Rickman edited Corrie's words and those of her parents into the script for "My Name is Rachel Corrie."

Rickman directed the play's first performance in April 2005 at the Royal Court in London.

A scheduled performance in March 2006 at the New York Theater Workshop was postponed indefinitely, allegedly because of concerns about adverse reaction from the Jewish community. That, of course, stirred up controversy.

The rap on the play is that it is one-sided, and a Web site, rachelcorriefacts.org, was set up to present other sides of the story.

Rada said the play is indeed one-sided, but it could not have been any other way.

"It is a very subjective story," she said. "It is almost all Rachel Corrie's writings. Very few words are not hers.

"I think it would be dangerous to lose touch with the fact that this is one person's view of what she sees happening."

The value of the play, Rada said, is that it explores an aspect of the Middle East conflict not so frequently considered by Americans and that — hopefully — it fosters conversation about the issues.

Rada played the role of Rachel during an eight-week run of the play this past fall in Denver. It was staged by Denver's Countdown to Zero company, which was created to do shows aimed at expanding "community exchange in a time of highly charged political extremes."

Countdown to Zero founder Brian Freeland directed the production, which has more recently been performed in Omaha and Lincoln, Neb., and in Des Moines, Iowa.

It will be presented Saturday and Sunday at Albuquerque's Out ch'Yonda with Rada again in the title role.

The play was brought to Albuquerque by the members of Justice First, an activist organization started in Albuquerque about a year ago in memory of Corrie. Vicki Johnson, a founding member of Justice First, said the organization supports diplomacy based on international law as the best hope for peace in the Middle East.

Johnson, 51, saw "My Name is Rachel Corrie" during its Denver run.

"As an activist myself, I thought it was a very human and artistic way of looking at a person facing a war situation," she said. "The play to me conveyed the whole, brief life of a young woman.

"I came away with a much fuller sense of what had been lost — someone who was creative and compassionate."

Johnson said the play did not seem political to her.

"It had a very different tone," she said. "But I believe it will help people think about what is happening in the siege of Gaza — to Palestinians and to Israelis, as well."

A group discussion will follow both performances at Out ch'Yonda.

Rada said there were talk-back discussions after most performances in Denver.

"We didn't direct them, but we let the audience ask questions and make observations," she said. "The discussion ranged from pointed, political questions, to 'How did you memorize all those lines?' "

Rada said all kinds of people attended the play in Denver: parents who had lost children, young activists about to go to the Middle East, Pakistanis, Muslims, orthodox Jews.

"We never could have guessed how rich an experience it would be to perform this piece for people," she said. "Art can transcend barriers that come between conversations. This (play) makes it human, and you can't reach out to people without that human element."

Still, Rada said she and director Freeland did not want to fall prey to anyone's agenda.

"Brian and I came to the piece as theater people first, not as activists," she said. "We wanted to get people talking, but (the play) was artistically interesting to us."

She said they focused on the fact that this was Corrie's story, not the story of the conflict in the Middle East.

"This is what she was writing," Rada said. "This is the truth in her moment. We were cognizant of the impact of this story. But when in doubt, we trusted our artistic instincts first and the political aspects of it second."

Corrie was a member of the International Solidarity Movement, which recruits civilians from around the world to take part in nonviolent protests against Israeli military actions on the West Bank and, during Corrie's time, the Gaza Strip.

Supporters view ISM as a humanitarian group. Opponents denounce it as an organization sympathetic to terrorist tactics.

Since her death, Corrie has been labeled, depending on point of view, as a naive bleeding heart, a terrorist sympathizer or a human sacrifice to the cause of social justice.

None of those tags fit the person Rada has come to know.

"She became something to everyone — someone to denigrate, a symbol of terrorism, a martyr," Rada said. "But she was a deeply feeling human being who saw suffering and felt the need to change it.

"That alone is an inspiration. If you need to take something from this play — that would be the thing. Not whether she is a martyr or a terrorist."