page_title: Rachel Corrie
section_title: Artistic tributes
hierarchical_section_title: Rachel Corrie / Subsequent events / Artistic tributes
context_page_description: Rachel Aliene Corrie was an American activist and diarist. She was a member of a pro-Palestinian group called the International Solidarity Movement. She was killed by an Israel Defense Forces armored bulldozer in a combat zone in Rafah, in the southern part of the Gaza Strip, under contested circumstances during the height of the second Palestinian intifada.
  She had gone to Gaza as part of her senior-year college assignment to connect her home town with Rafah in a sister cities project. While there, she had engaged with other International Solidarity Movement activists in efforts to prevent the Israeli army's demolition of Palestinian houses. According to the Israeli authorities the demolitions were carried out to eliminate weapons-smuggling tunnels. According to human rights groups the demolitions were used as collective punishment.
  Less than two months after her arrival, on March 16, 2003, Corrie was killed during an Israeli military operation after a three-hour confrontation between Israeli soldiers operating two bulldozers and eight ISM activists.
context_section_description: In 2004, Alaska composer Philip Munger wrote a cantata about Corrie called The Skies are Weeping, which was scheduled to premiere on April 27 at the University of Alaska Anchorage, where Munger teaches. After objections to the upcoming performance were received, including from members of the Jewish community, a forum was held co-chaired by Munger and a local rabbi who claimed the work "romanticized terrorism". After the forum "disintegrate[d]", Munger announced, "I cannot subject 16 students ... to any possibility of physical harm or to the type of character assassination some of us are already undergoing. Performance of The Skies are Weeping at this time and place is withdrawn for the safety of the student performers." Munger later related that he had received threatening e-mails whose content he considered was "[just] short of what you'd take to the troopers", and that some of his students had received similar communications. The cantata was eventually performed at the Hackney Empire theatre in London, premiering on November 1, 2005.
  In early 2005, My Name is Rachel Corrie, a play composed from Corrie's journals and emails from Gaza and compiled by actor Alan Rickman and journalist Katharine Viner, in a production directed by Rickman, was presented in London and later revived in October 2005. The play was to be transferred to the New York Theatre Workshop, but when it was postponed indefinitely, the British producers denounced the decision as censorship and withdrew the show. It finally opened Off-Broadway on October 15, 2006, for an initial run of 48 performances. In the same year, My Name is Rachel Corrie was shown at the Pleasance theatre as part of the Edinburgh (Fringe) Festival. The play has also been published as a paperback, and performed in ten countries, including Israel.
  Singer Billy Bragg recounted Corrie's death in the song "The Lonesome Death of Rachel Corrie", composed to the tune of Bob Dylan's "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll". After being originally released as a free digital download, it was included on the album Fight Songs in 2011. Irish folk music/world music group Kíla included the instrumental "Rachel Corrie" on their 2015 album Suas Síos.
  In 2003, Pittsburgh singer Mike Stout wrote and composed a song about Rachel Corrie, which was included with other anti-war songs in his album "War and Resistance".
  Also in 2003, David Rovics wrote the song The Death of Rachel Corrie, included in the album "return".
caption: My Name Is Rachel Corrie at Playhouse Theatre, London, 2006.
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