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.