My Name is Rachel Corrie

Burning Coal Theatre Company is proud to announce ten performances over the next ten months of My Name is Rachel Corrie by Alan Rickman and Katharine Viner at the Murphey School.  Each performance is 75 minutes long without intermission. The performances will take place with a different cast on each date.

My Name is Rachel Corrie is based on the diary and emails of the young American Activist Rachel Corrie.  Rachel decided to put her body in jeopardy by travelling to the West Bank in Israel to stand in front of bulldozers attempting to raise a Palestinian neighborhood in order to build illegal ‘settlements’ for Israelis.  She was run over by a bulldozer operated by an Israeli Defense Forces soldier and killed.  My Name Is Rachel Corrie is the story of one American who stood up for her values and for the rights of a people for whom she had no connection other than the connection of being human. 

My Name is Rachel Corrie premiered at London’s Royal Court Theatre under the direction of playwright and actor Alan Rickman.  It transferred to the West End and was scheduled to transfer to the New York Theatre Workshop, but the playwrights withdrew the play after NYTW said they were postponing the production “indefinitely” because of input from some of their supporters.  A year later a commercial production of the play ran at the Off-Broadway Minetta Lane Theatre in 2006.  Burning Coal presented the play as part of its Second Stage series in May 2011 under the direction of Tea Alagic.

Alan Rickman was an English actor and director who performed onstage at the Royal Shakespeare Company, on the West End and at theatres throughout England, the United States and the world.  He is most known for Les Liaisons Dangereuses on stage and for the role of Hans Gruber in Die Hard and as Severus Snape in the Harry Potter films.  Other films include Michael Collins, Robin Hood, Sense & Sensibility and Love, Actually among others. 

Katherine Viner is a British journalist.  She became The Guardian’s first female editor-in-chief in 2015.  Earlier, she was a features editor for Cosmopolitan and commissioning editor and writer for The Sunday Times’ magazine.  

Jeff Zinn began his artistic journey immersed in the folk and protest music scenes of Boston, performing in coffeehouses and G.I. venues during the Vietnam War era. Transitioning from music to theater during his studies at Franconia College, he was mentored by Ronald Bennett, himself a student of Michael Chekhov, who had trained at the Moscow Art Theatre with Stanislavski —a lineage that deeply influenced his theatrical sensibilities. He appeared Off-Broadway as “Danny” in David Mamet’s Sexual Perversity in Chicago and made his Broadway debut portraying Trety in The Suicide starring Derek Jacobi. An acting class with Susan Batson inspired him to pivot toward directing, shaping a second act of his career that would see him leading new play development at Ensemble Studio Theatre, the West Bank Cafe, and the Circle Rep Lab.