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.