Opening Night

ET is ready to open My Name Is Rachel Corrie, and we're ready to share a few production stills (all by Kevin McLaughlin). Click on the image to view a larger version.

The "Mercurial, Magnetic Powerhouse"

ET isn't alone in recognizing Emily Gunyou Halaas's talents.

Check out what City Pages has to say about My Name Is Rachel Corrie.

ET at MPR

Minnesota Public Radio arts reporter Marianne Combs stopped by rehearsal last night.

Check out her Remembering Rachel Corrie on the State of the Arts blog.

She’s Getting Engaged: Women in Their Communities

Sunday, September 13, 3:45-4:45pm
Free and open to the public

Data shows that for decades women have shown up at the polls more often than men. Data also shows that men tend to be more involved in political processes, while women volunteer for non-political causes more. Do women interact with their communities differently than men?

Join us for a conversation about what it is to be a woman engaged with her community.

Panelists include Dr. Lisa Albrecht of the University of Minnesota's social justice major, Roann Cramer of the Lake Harriet Concessions Citizen Advisory Council and Shannon Gibney, professor at Minneapolis Community and Technical College.

Come for the 2pm matinee then stay for the panel!

“Trying to Be Local”: The Nature, Purpose and Potential of Civic Engagement

Saturday, September 12, 5:30-6:30pm
Free and open to the public

“We need a civic renewal movement.”

So concluded the D.C.-based Case Foundation in a 2006 paper on contemporary civic engagement. Is this true? Why the clarion call? What shape might such a “movement” take? What would its outcomes look like?

Join us for a conversation about what it means to be civically engaged here and now.

Panelists include Maria Asp of Children’s Theatre Company's Neighborhood Bridges program and James A. Williams, artistic associate at Pillsbury House Theatre.

Come for the panel, grab dinner in the neighborhood, then come back for the show at 8pm!

Tech

ET reports on two 12-hour days of technical rehearals with a few photos...

Scenic designer Jason Brown and director Jessica Finney consult on colors for the stage

Producing director Matt DiCintio is about to slit open a finger as he wires a sound cable

Jason Brown paints one of the flats that will hang on stage, drawn from one of Rachel Corrie's own sketches

Jason Brown's model for his scenic design

With most of the stage painted and most of the flats hung and painted, ET called it a night

A Run-Through

A few photos from last night's run-through. It just so happens Jason Brown's set fits perfectly and snuggly in the basement conference room at Homewood Studios- even if we had to work around the building's support posts. The art on the walls is part of Homewood's permanent collection.

Emily Gunyou Halaas reviews her lines before rehearsal

Gunyou Halaas as Rachel Corrie, with stage manager Sarah Bauer following along in the script

Gunyou Halaas as Rachel Corrie

Gunyou Halaas as Rachel Corrie, with director Jessica Finney watching and sound designer Mike Hallenbeck at the controls

My Name Is Jess(ica)

We invite you to contribute to this blog by telling us what your name is. Tell us at contact@emigranttheater.org, and join our conversation. Jessica Finney, who directs My Name Is Rachel Corrie, tells us her name(s).

“Hi, I’m Jess.”

“Hello, my name is Jessica.”

Sometimes I don’t know which I’m going to say until it has already come out of my mouth. To be sure, I was born Jessica Diane Finney 30 years ago this past July. Most of my family calls me Jessica. Most of my friends call me Jess. Sometimes I prefer one or the other, but mostly I’m fine with both. I’m a chameleon. I adapt to whatever situation is in front of me. Just don’t call me Jesse; for some reason that rubs me the wrong way.

I am fascinated with the gray area that is life. I’m always pondering the big questions and tend to get caught up in the minutia of the smaller questions as well. I approach life with the curiosity of a child. I am easily overwhelmed by emotion. Sometimes I put myself down for being so “emotional.” Sometimes I am in awe of how deeply I feel. And even though I sometimes search for definition in my personal life and work, I am inherently grateful to have the opportunity to embrace this beautifully confusing shade of gray.

Rachel Corrie and I were born in the same year, only months apart. When I turned 30 a month ago, I began to wonder what Rachel would have been like had she made it to see this year in her life. Would her idealism have stayed intact? Would she still be involved in activism? Would she look back on some of her writings and shake her head in disbelief at the thought that her parents had published them? Like me, Rachel felt. Deeply. Like Rachel, I want to make a difference. Countless others share our connections.

I chose my college and started my higher education with the express intent of graduating with a degree in International Studies with a concentration on Africa so that I could join the Peace Corps and head to West Africa to teach HIV/AIDS awareness. I signed up for French class to help me on my way. I auditioned for a play because a sweet boy in my orientation group was going to and I thought, “Oh, that might be fun.” I got cast (he didn’t), and the rest is, as they say, history.

Theater, for me, is a laboratory for the perpetual student. My curiosity is rewarded with discoveries and connections between actor and audience. My aim in all the plays I direct is to spark dialogue: in the rehearsal room, in the theater, in the car on the ride home from the play, in a personal revelation months or years down the road. Sometimes I can realize those aims directly— I overhear the dialogue as patrons file out of the theater or people tell me about their revelations later. But most of the time I am left in the gray area, curiously hoping. I hope that you will embrace the gray with me, not searching so ardently to define life in black and white.

And you can call me Jess. Or Jessica.

My Name Is Rachel Corrie

Public Service

Having quoted a Republican yesterday on civic engagement, ET came across another.

Teddy [Kennedy] taught us all that public service isn't a hobby or even an occupation, but a way of life. — California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger

McCain's Town Hall

Say what you will about Senator John McCain's politics, his grammar or his qualification of this summer's town hall meetings, but he does seem to have a point:

I've seen involvement and engagement on the part of Americans that I have never seen the likes of which before.

Many Americans are more engaged than they have ever been. True...?

First Week of Rehearsal...

Director Jessica Finney talks about the first week of rehearsals...

We wrapped up our first week of rehearsals for Rachel Corrie on Sunday. It's been a good week, and I am grateful for many things, but here are two to share with you now:

Working at Homewood Studios. We're working on art whilst surrounded by art, which is truly a blessing. In addition, Rachel Corrie was always sketching in her journals and collecting images that resonated with her to make collages on her bedroom walls:

Each time I move, I spend weeks painting, gluing things to my walls, choosing the precise pictures of goddesses and art postcards. This is a labour of love, and I become completely immersed in it.

Working with Emily- I would be hard pressed to find an actor as open as Emily. I cast her without an audition simply because I could sense the fire in her belly, just like Rachel Corrie describes. Tuesday night we met with most of the production team (Jason Brown, Geoff Wold, Mike Hallenbeck, Sarah Bauer, Matt Di Cintio), so we were seven in total then. Other than that night, it's just been the two of us. I think we both had a sigh of relief after the first night on our own- we were able to relax into just figuring it out as a team.

We share information and insight: about the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, about what made Rachel Corrie tick, about how this script taken from writings works on the stage in a theatrical way. We pore over books that Rachel might have used as source material (the Let's Go Israel guidebook, Chomsky's Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel, and the Palestinians), we talk about our own forays into activism and we work to unravel the investigation of self and humanity that is My Name is Rachel Corrie. As Rachel Corrie wrote:

We are all born and someday we'll all die. Most likely to some degree alone. What if our aloneness isn't a tragedy? What if our aloneness is what allows us to speak the truth without being afraid? What if our aloneness is what allows us to adventure- to experience the world as a dynamic presence - as a changeable, interactive thing?

A Welcome Start

In July 2007, Eleanor Clift wrote compassionately in Newsweek about controversies that have surrounded productions of My Name Is Rachel Corrie. ET appreciated the view.

My Name Is Emily

Earlier this year, we invited you to contribute to this blog by telling us what your name is. Tell us at contact@emigranttheater.org, and join our conversation. Emily Gunyou Halaas, who will portray Rachel Corrie, tells us her name.

My name is Emily. I was born two months early and didn’t see my mom for a week while she recovered in a different hospital. To calm my crying my dad would reach into the incubator, which was my home for the first month of my life, to rub the soles of my feet on his stubble. I have had several reviewers refer to my expressive feet. I have my dad to thank for that.

Then I got older— too fast— and, in a dark moment told my mom I thought I’d stop acting for a while. She told me that was the stupidest decision I could make, and here I am. I shouldn’t have lived and my mom gave me life. Twice.

I am an undercooked human. I am al dente.

I fall asleep easily, but I dream deep all nightlong. Vivid, grasping, unforgiving, sweeping dreams about anything and everything. I wake up with difficulty and never feel rested. I’m always tired from my dream world. Sometimes I wake up in the dark from a nightmare. I used to sneak into my parents’ bed, then I made a kitty cuddle me and now my husband kisses my temples and reassures me that we haven’t be annihilated by nuclear warheads. I only sort of believe him, but I’m glad for the kisses.

I worry about my family, my country, my health; I worry about sustainability of the planet, the dirty dishes, the daily genocides; I worry that I won’t serve my community to the fullest. When I wake up in the morning I eat peanut butter toast, drink Earl Grey tea and silently vow to approach every choice generously; to lead by example; to champion community with my art.

Henri-Frederic Amiel said, “Hope is only the love of life.” I vow to love life. And then I take a breath and vow it again.

Citizens at the Center

And while we're on the topic of civic engagement- which we'll be on through the run of My Name Is Rachel Corrie- ET wants to share a document that's guided us.

In 2006, the Washington, D.C.-based Case Foundation published its study Citizens at the Center: A New Approach to Civic Engagement. The report finds:

“New civic cultures [need to] lay the groundwork for embedding a deeper ethic of civic engagement across communities so that it becomes part and parcel of everyday life, rather than episodic activities such as volunteering or voting that are squeezed between work or school and family and less important than either.”

Check out the report. Consider its conclusions against the sparseness of Wikipedia's page on "civic engagement."

That's why we're producing My Name Is Rachel Corrie.

An Extraordinary Ride

Washington Post political correspondent Dan Balz has just published The Battle for America 2008: The Story of an Extraordinary Election.

The Post's website is running a series of excerpts, which includes links to Balz's articles from the two-year campaign. One caught ET's eye.

In "At the End of an Extraordinary Ride" from November 4, Balz writes of Obama's final day on the campaign trail and the intense interest Americans showed throughout the campaign on both sides of the aisle:

"Campaign 2008 set records for intensity and involvement. I remember traveling with John Edwards on the day he announced his candidacy in late December 2006. He began in New Orleans, in the storm-ravaged Ninth Ward and from there flew to Des Moines for an obligatory stop in the state with the first caucuses. It was during the Christmas holidays, a year from the caucuses and nearly two years from the presidential election itself.

"When Edwards arrived at the Iowa Historical Museum for his evening rally, more than a thousand people were waiting to see him. That turned out not to be an anomaly but the beginning of a pattern. Everywhere the candidates went, particularly those seeking the Democratic nomination, people turned out. They attended rallies and town hall meetings, they followed the race on the Internet and on cable television and in newspapers and on blogs. They gave money... They were engaged."

In ET's post in January, producing director Matt Di Cintio wrote about ET's motivation to produce My Name Is Rachel Corrie. Balz reiterates those observations about the country's widespread and unprecedented- at least for this generation- engagement.

First Peek!

ET spent the weeked kodaking Emily Gunyou Halaas for production and press images.

Here's your very first peek of Emily as Rachel Corrie.

Of course, you'll have to come to My Name Is Rachel Corrie to see the picture come to life!

ET Isn't Fringing, But We Know Who Is

After posting info about the show actor Emily Gunyou Halaas is about to appear in, ET got curious about other Fringing artists who have joined the journey with ET.

Here's a rundown of a few we found:

Sarah Gioia, who staged Kid-Simple: a radio play in the flesh in 2006, directs Steve Mould's comedy Buyer's Remorse. Mike Hallenbeck (below in a photo by Kevin McLaughlin), who designed sound for A Corner of the World and who won an Ivey-Award for his designs for Kid-Simple and Hunger, contributes sound.

Kari Kelly (below with Maren Bush in a photo by Kevin McLaughlin), who appeared as the sword-swallowing Mary in Tallgrass Gothic in 2006, appears doubly, you might say, in Boobs.

Katharine Horowitz, who assisted Mike Hallenbeck on Kid-Simple and contributed her own design last year to Tanya Barfield's Blue Door, designs for Bard Fiction and Monster.

Nathan Christopher, who gave "satyr" a whole new meaning with his costume design for Kid-Simple (see Jerome Yorke and Joe Swanson below in a photo by Kevin McLaughlin), has penned The Flickering Wall.


Apparently Catherine Johnson (wigged below in a photo by Jennie Batten) can't get enough of dead famous people. Having appeared as a re-capitated Jayne Mansfield in ET's 2005 Fringe production of Dead Wait by Carson Kreitzer, she returns to the Fringe in Something Witchy.

Katie Willer, who appeared in ET's inaugural production of The Presence of Children, stages Aaron Chrisopher's Livelihood.

Allana Olson, who has been a stage manager for multiple ET shows and who designed properties for Hunger and Jesus Hates Me (smattering below), returns to the Fringe as a venue tech.

Wade A. Vaugh (below in a photo by Jennie Batten), who joined Catherine Johnson in limbo for Dead Wait, gets a little famously dead himself in The William Williams Effect.

And finally, Matthew Everett, who wrote for ET's 2005 Auction Play, continues his role as the ubiquitous and perceptive blogger for the Fringe.

We're glad these folks have joined us. Now join them this week!

Check out Emily in the Fringe

If you haven't had the pleasure yet of seeing the work of Emily Gunyou Halaas, who will portray Rachel Corrie, catch her at the Minnesota Fringe Festival this weekend in Strong by Dominic Orlando.

ET's got some other connections to Strong, coincidentally enough:

ET auctioned off short works by Dominic Orlando in our 2005 PlayDate.

Strong also features Sasha Andreev, who played George Clooney and others in ET's 2005 commissioned work A Corner of the World by Bridget Carpenter, Julia Cho, Jordan Harrison, Itamar Moses and Chay Yew.

The journey is under way!

After a brief postponement, My Name Is Rachel Corrie is about to go into rehearsals. Mark your calendar:

Thursday, September 10 at 8:00 p.m. (preview)
Friday, September 11 at 8:00 p.m. (opening gala performance)
Saturday, September 12 at 8:00 p.m.
Sunday, September 13 at 2:00 p.m.
Monday, September 14 at 8:00 p.m. (reduced-priced tickets)

Wednesday, September 16 at 8:00 p.m.
Thursday, September 17 at 8:00 p.m.
Friday, September 18 at 8:00 p.m.
Saturday, September 19 at 8:00 p.m. (closing)

Open Eye Figure Theatre
506 E 24th St
Minneapolis 55404

If you need a little refresher about My Name Is Rachel Corrie, find the press release below.

Come back to us soon and often for more updates about the production, the project and the programming.

‘Finally Awake, Forever and Ever’
Emigrant Theater sets new performance schedule for regional professional premiere of MY NAME IS RACHEL CORRIE

Minneapolis, Minnesota – Emigrant Theater (ET) is preparing to present My Name Is Rachel Corrie, a one-woman play taken from the writings of Rachel Corrie and edited by Alan Rickman and Katharine Viner. The production will feature Emily Gunyou Halaas and will now run September 10-19, 2009, at Open Eye Figure Theatre in Minneapolis. It will be staged by ET producing director Jessica Finney.

On March 16, 2003, Rachel Corrie, a 23-year-old Olympia, Washington-native, was crushed to death by an Israeli Army bulldozer in Gaza as she tried to prevent the demolition of a Palestinian home. From Rachel’s own letters, emails and journals, My Name Is Rachel Corrie paints a portrait of a messy, articulate, Pat Benatar-loving chain-smoker who left a tranquil life as a college student to work as an activist in the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Since the play’s London premiere at the Royal Court in 2005, the piece has been surrounded by both controversy and impassioned proponents and raised an unprecedented call to support political work and the difficult discourse it creates.

ET was founded in 2004 to explore perspectives of the American identity, foster the ingenuity of the American voice and champion living playwrights. City Pages named ET Best Independent Theater of 2007. This presentation of My Name Is Rachel Corrie is the play’s professional regional premiere after the controversy that shut down its initial New York staging in 2006.

“As humans, our compassion naturally leads us to help those around us,” director Finney notes. “As Americans, we try to extend that help across borders to those who are not born into the freedoms our citizenship grants us. That’s what draws me to this play, that aspect of the American identity. The play does not paint Rachel as a martyr; it probes the psyche of a young woman who searched tirelessly for what we all long for – meaning and understanding. She may never have satisfied her search, but, as she wrote, ‘I was finally awake, forever and ever.’”

In her notes with the published script, co-adapter Katharine Viner wrote of the difficulty of depicting Rachel: “We’ve tried to do justice to the whole of Rachel: neither saint nor traitor, both serious and funny, messy talented, devastatingly prescient and human and whole.”

“This is a departure for us,” notes ET producing director Matt Di Cintio. “We founded ET to produce the work of living playwrights, especially those who live in our community. We’ve spent four years engaging them in the issues that concern us all here in the Twin Cities. We’re aware this play doesn’t have a living writer at its creation. But the heart of the play is so important. Given how high interest in the future of our nation– and the world really– has been over the past year, we believe this project is an important vehicle to continue that dialogue.”

That dialogue will be fostered through public forums about the nature of civic engagement and through partnerships with Avalon High School in St. Paul and the Higher Education Consortium for Urban Affairs. Details for these activities are forthcoming.

Emily Gunyou Halaas will star as Rachel Corrie. She has appeared with the Jungle (Shipwrecked!), Theatre Latté Da (Passage of Dreams), the Guthrie (Third), Mixed Blood Theatre (1001), La Jolla Playhouse and Theatre de la Jeune (The Deception), Frank Theatre (Vinegar Tom), Gremlin Theatre (Almost Exactly Like Us), Park Square Theatre, Red Eye Theater and Starting Gate, among others locally. She was a 1999-2000 performing apprentice with The Children’s Theatre Company and trained at Circle in the Square Theatre School in New York. She appeared in the film “Captured.” My Name Is Rachel Corrie will be her first appearance with ET.

Director Jessica Finney has staged Blue Door, Jesus Hates Me, Hunger, THOM PAIN (based on nothing), Tallgrass Gothic (2006 Top Ten production: City Pages and Lavender Magazine), A Corner of the World and The Presence of Children for ET. She has worked on Tegonni: an African Antigone, a collaboration with Collective Artistes (UK), the Performance Studio Workshop of Nigeria and the University of Richmond. A frequent mentor for the Pillsbury House Theatre’s Chicago Avenue Project, Finney has also worked on Pericles and A Christmas Carol (the Guthrie), the world premiere of Lillian Groag’s Midons (People’s Light & Theatre) and Raw Stages at the History Theatre. In February she staged Will Eno’s The Flu Season for the Professional Actor Training Program at the University of North Carolina.

My Name Is Matt

I want to know what your name is. I want to know what it is you fall asleep thinking about. I want to know what wakes you up at night. I want to know what you wake up in the morning bound to do.

It’s fair that I start. My name is Matt. I’m a cynic, but I’m in recovery. I go to meetings, but we call them performances.

I think it’s appropriate that 2008 was a leap year. To me, 2008 felt much longer than just an extra day. As it was for many of you, my year was regulated by caucuses and primaries and Super Tuesday and conventions and lines at polls and recounts. Wasn’t it easy for us to get swept up? Apathy and ambivalence seemed blissfully rare. I’m not the only one who read more blogs than I had thought existed. I’m not the only one who volunteered for multiple campaigns. I’m not the only who gave more political contributions than I probably should have. I’m not the only one who worried about the consequences of a tanking economy. Or ballot initiatives. Or war. You’ve done all those things, too.

Since November 4th, pundits have grown fond of saying that, regardless of where one sits on the political spectrum, the election of our first African-American president is momentous. Surely it is; Barack Obama would have had trouble voting 50 years ago. But I would be disappointed if we treated January 20th as merely a longed-for antidote. We have too much to do.

That’s why we’re producing My Name Is Rachel Corrie.

A little history… Last January, Emigrant Theater produced Tanya Barfield’s Blue Door at the Guthrie. We were proud of the production and very grateful for its reception. However, Jess and I decided we needed a little rest. Blue Door was our fourth production in eleven months; Jess directed all four, and she and I produced all four. For an organization run by only two people, that’s a lot of work to throw ourselves into. Jess and I decided to spend a few months evaluating ET’s goals.

Over the summer, we spent time considering our Five-Year Doctrine. Which is to say, we again took up the question: How can theater act as service to our community? Surely we must call them actors for a reason.

In August, out of curiosity, we read My Name Is Rachel Corrie. Like some of you, we were familiar with the play through news reports of the controversy when its U.S. premiere in New York was announced. I’m a fan of the work of so many working playwrights, many of whom are our neighbors here in the Twin Cities; I can’t help reading a play without thinking about how we might be able to produce it. For someone eager to produce, it felt strange to read a play of words not written as a play— and eerie knowing I couldn’t have a conversation with the “playwright.”

But I found myself reading the play aloud. (I couldn’t resist the first time I read THOM PAIN: based on nothing either.) I’m not an actor, and not just because reading aloud brings out my old speech impediments. While I’m happy to say my drag role as Sister 6 in Hillbilly Wedding brought down the house my sophomore year in high school, join me in my gratitude that my college professors directed me down other paths! But I read the play aloud. I read the play aloud because I saw in Rachel Corrie a young woman who wanted to make a difference. It’s easy to call Rachel naïve; it’s easy to say she was underinformed; it’s easy to claim her facts were wrong. It’s hard to say she didn’t want to try.

My name is Matt, and I want to try. I’ve always thought things can be better. I’m one of those people for whom things means the way of life around me. I’ve always thought we’ve had so many opportunities to make things better. I volunteer for nonprofits I believe in. I write to representatives and senators regularly. I made a resolution in 2007 to email the President once a week (the one resolution I managed to fulfill). I’ve volunteered with four political campaigns in the past eight months. But it’s easy to be involved when we have people to elect. My name is Matt. I like politics— well, I love politics, but I love conversation more. We gave Emigrant Theater its name because we believe that each of us— and all of us— have places to go. So we might as well talk about it.

Tell us your name. Tell us what it is you fall asleep thinking about. Tell us what wakes you up at night. Tell us what you’re bound to do when you wake up in the morning.

Tell us.

Don’t tell us because you’ll get free tickets to My Name Is Rachel Corrie (if you email us by January 20th). Tell us because you’re not done thinking about things. Tell us because you’re not done thinking about that better place we can live in. Tell us at contact@emigranttheater.org, and we'll post.

Welcome to the journey!

We at Emigrant Theater created this blog to accompany our upcoming production of My Name Is Rachel Corrie, which opens May 8, 2009, in Minneapolis.

We’ve chosen to produce My Name Is Rachel Corrie because at ET we believe the play speaks deeply to our need to work to improve our community. Like all of you, we at ET have our own individual beliefs about what “improvement” means, and they’ll surely differ from what “improvement” means to each of you. So much the better. This blog isn’t for us; this is for us to ask you. This blog is for you. If you feel passionately about where you live, or what you volunteer for, this blog is for you. If you’ve ever complained about taxes or your representative, or to your representative, or about social service or social injustice, this blog is for you. If you’ve ever voted, this blog is for you. This blog is for you regardless of what it is you’re passionate about. Tell us.