By me.

How quickly we backslide:

In June of 1937 the federal government slapped chains and a padlock onto the doors of Maxine Elliot Theatre in New York. It was an attempt to halt a performance of "The Cradle Will Rock," a Marc Blizstein musical the feds found far too full of dangerous ideas for public consumption. The show's director, Orson Welles, rushed back from Washington, D.C., on opening day after a failed attempt to convince the government to lift its ban. He found about 600 people waiting to see the performance idling in front of the theater, along with his cast.

Welles got on the phone that day and eventually led the throngs of theater goers and his cast through the city's streets to the Venice Theatre where, due to fear of reprisals and potential loss of work, the performers belted out their songs and spoke their lines while staying scattered amongst the audience under dimmed lights. Blizstein was the only one to take the stage that night to provide piano accompaniment.

Times change: it's 2006. I scrutinize airline prices between Priceline, Expedia and JetBlue. I use online pull-down menus to dither between low-calorie, vegetarian and kosher in-flight meal options. Things stay the same: I head to New York in support of a play that — due to the weight of its content, not the merit of its art — suddenly lacks a home.

"My Name is Rachel Corrie" is that play. Rachel left her childhood home of Olympia, WA, to work as a human rights observer and peace activist in the Gaza town of Rafah, on the Egyptian border, with the International Solidarity Movement. She was killed there on March 16, 2003, by a giant bulldozer operated by an Israeli soldier. The play consists of her words, beginning as a young girl. Her private journals and e-mails to family were edited into a narrative monologue by Guardian newspaper reporter Katherine Viner and actor Alan Rickman, who also directs the play. Bringing Rachel's words to the stage is actress Megan Dodds.

I saw the play last October as it began its second sellout run at the Royal Court Theatre in London. "Surreal" fails to adequately describe what it was like to sit in that theater packed with British patrons watching a Californian actress vocalize the writings of this Oly Girl as comfortably as if they were her own. I live in Olympia, my adopted home for almost a decade. I had arrived in London that fall after spending the summer working as the media coordinator for ISM in the West Bank. Sitting next to me were Rochelle Gause and Serena Becker, women from Olympia who would be in Rafah a few weeks later working on behalf of the Olympia-Rafah Sister City Project, an ambitious though not yet officially sanctioned group.