Re “Controversial ‘My Name Is Rachel Corrie’ Arrives at the Will Geer”
[img]1246|left|Alan Blumenfeld||no_popup[/img][Editor’s Note: The one-woman play “My Name Is Rachel Corrie” opens a 4-Thursday night September run tomorrow at 8 at the Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum in Topanga Canyon, 1419 Topanga Canyon Rd., about halfway through the canyon, between PCH and Ventura Boulevard. www.theatricum.com]
I interviewed Alan Blumenfeld about the Rachel Corrie play because I wanted to know how a Jew felt about sponsoring what appears to be a strong defense of this uncommonly foolish, wholly unworldly young woman who walked in front of an Israeli tank as it was razing a Palestinian home.
It was obvious as soon as we met, at Tanner’s, that Mr. Blumenfeld, a bear of a man, a lifelong actor and a member of the theatre’s board, was no pantywaist who was going to mumble a trifling response.
“This is what I believe” is carved all over this instantly vivid, enormously outgoing man, in English and Hebrew.
After saying good morning, you want to lean back and listen. I did.
“I liken not only Rachel Corrie, but the play, the situation to this: If you ask the average American about The Troubles in Northern Ireland, people would go:
“ ‘Uhhhhhhhhh, I sort of know this. I sort of know that. I think I heard…Wasn’t there…?’
“Yet there are strong preconceptions, misconceptions. Some people know there is Orange involved. Some know bombings are involved. England is involved.
“Anyway, I liken that to what is going on in the Middle East for the general public. For Jewish folks, it’s the surest way to clear a dinner table conversation. Whatever side you are on, left or right, East Coast, West Coast, it is incendiary and causes people to get mad at each other.
“It’s disheartening, and it’s complicated.”
Mr. Blumenfeld said that when he first heard, eight years ago last spring, that a young girl from the state of Washington had stepped in front of an Israeli tank and been killed, “I immediately felt both empathy and anger, empathy for her and her position, empathy for the Palestinian homes that were being leveled, anger at the situation, anger at a system that allows people to be killed in these kinds of foolish ways.
“Honestly, I don’t know what happened. It’s hot. Tempers are flaring. Everyone has an opinion. The tank driver is trying to do his job. I don’t know what their policies are. And then boom.
“I have to assume this man did not intentionally kill a young woman, that what happened was out of sheer hysteria. I have to assume he feels horrible. Maybe not. I don’t know if he knew who it was, whether an American or an Israeli.”
(To be continued)
