Monique Wilson and the sad-eyed lady of the occupied land

N obody said it would be easy. Art, theater  mulling over the thoughts of Eve Ensler can be downright provocative and quite difficult, lyrically illuminating somebody’s downfall and the sonorousness of its truths, letdowns and sorrows. Like the “eye scream” scene in A Clockwork Orange, the eyelids of our souls are forcibly opened with metaphorical metal clamps to make us endure what’s corrosive about the human condition. The plots bury us. The acts don’t feel acted out. The epiphanies bring in more darkness and doubt. No one is breaking into song and no stagehands are bringing the gods from the machine down. Sometimes there is but one voice: a voice in the wilderness, subsisting on peas given by strangers, tea and a fiery conviction, staring down the clawing metal beast.

In this case the voice, those words belong to a certain Rachel. 

Rachel Corrie was an American peace activist from Olympia, Washington who was crushed to death by an Israeli bulldozer on March 16, 2003 while undertaking non-violent direct action to protect the home of a Palestinian family from demolition.

“I can’t cool boiling waters in Russia,” ends Rachel in one of her e-mails. “I can’t be Picasso. I can’t be Jesus. I can’t save the planet single-handedly. I can wash dishes.”

Except for keeping plates immaculate, Rachel in all her aloneness spoke the truth without being afraid. And hers was a lonesome symbolic death.

 My Name is Rachel Corrie — edited by British actor and director Alan Rickman and Katharine Viner, taken from the writings of Corrie herself — is all about a woman, a member of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), who left her middle-class American life to encounter death in the Gaza Strip, as well her musings on the slings and arrows (bullets, to be more precise) of outrageous conflict in the Middle East. A brief history: Shortly after Rachel’s death, several of her e-mails home from Gaza were published in a number of publications, including The Guardian. Rickman was so moved by Rachel’s writings (“It’s like jumping into someone’s soul.”) that he approached the Royal Court Theater about a prospective play. The Corrie family sent 184 pages consisting of Rachel’s letters, e-mails and journals. Viner from The Guardian was brought in to shape the material into a play. Under the direction of Rickman, and featuring the actress Megan Dodds, My Name is Rachel Corrie opened at the Royal Court Theater to much acclaim and controversy.

Now the play is being presented by New Voice Company at the Music Museum in Greenhills on Sept. 3, Friday, and 4, Saturday, at 8 p.m. It stars an actress also not known for treading the path of least resistance — actress and activist Monique Wilson.

Monique could’ve done something else, something glitzy for her 30th anniversary in theater this year. Book a concert hall (the Music Museum most probably), put an orchestra together, release an album, plod through those Broadway/West End hits (starting from her starry debut as Molly in Annie, highlighted by her turn as Kim in Miss Saigon, in between that she played Anne Frank), pied-piper a whole pack of sponsors, have the whole thing televised (Kapuso or Kapamilya), let everyone know how she sang with her heroine Vanessa Redgrave (in “The Fallen Heroes” memorial concert in London), or performed with Jane Fonda, Rosario Dawson, Jennifer Hudson and Jennifer Beals (in The Vagina Monologues 10th V-Day anniversary performance in New Orleans) — but instead Monique Wilson is being Rachel Corrie.

“I would’ve been bored to tears if I did the (anniversary concert),” says Monique Wilson with chuckle. “Some of my friends have even discouraged me from doing My Name is Rachel Corrie. Would people even come see it? But it’s all about risk-taking. It’s not just a financial and economic risk, that’s just the small part of it. The bigger risk is personal and emotional. When you do a play like this you open yourself up to judgment, criticism, or even hostility. But as an artist if you make it comfortable for people all the time, then you’re not really saying anything.”

The London-based Monique is currently in Manila for a couple of months. She teaches drama at the East 15 Acting School in the English capital. In her class was a Palestinian student from the West Bank, who lived as an exile all her life, was a refugee who came to England on full scholarship — and her name is Bayan.

“In acting class, you cannot help it. You are forced to share personal things.” Monique explains, adding that there are two million Palestinian asylum seekers in England alone because of the conflict. “I got to hear firsthand what the news don’t tell you.” For Monique, Bayan gave the Israel-Palestine dispute a face. “It humanizes all the news reports you read, it was eye-opening.”

Monique already heard about Rachel Corrie around five years ago and was aware of the circumstances of her death, but then in June this year the MV Rachel Corrie (containing humanitarian aid — school supplies, printing paper, children’s shoes, wheelchairs, sports equipment, fire extinguishers — to Palestinians) wasn’t allowed to get to Gaza. It was part of the Freedom Flotilla intercepted by Israeli forces that left nine activists dead. It was the news of the day.

“It woke up something in me. If we don’t do anything about it, then we are complicit to it. I looked for the play. I told the people at New Voice, ‘I don’t really feel like doing a concert anymore.’ It seems superfluous, doesn’t contribute to anything. We are not world leaders, we don’t even head an NGO, but as artists we have to keep doing our best. Why did we do Vagina Monologues before? Because as artists we have an important role to play in world issues. We don’t take any sides; our job is to show the truth and what is truthful.

She found out that some of the crewmembers in MV Rachel Corrie were Filipinos, and it wasn’t reported by Philippine media outfits. The conflict in the Middle East also opened Monique’s eyes to what’s happening in our own neck of the woods in Mindanao where our Muslim brothers and sisters are getting the second-class-citizen treatment… the stigma as Moslems.

“Their stories need to be told. Theater, after all, is just telling people’s stories. As artists we have to keep interrogating, right? We have to keep asking questions. And even if we don’t find the answers, it’s the asking that’s important. That’s what My Name is Rachel Corrie will do.”

After securing the rights to the play, Monique made a fateful trip to Palestine.

“It all begins at the Tel Aviv Airport to get to the West Bank, I don’t think I have been questioned (by immigration officers) that much. So I pretended that I was a pilgrim bound for Jerusalem.”

She checked into a hotel in East Jerusalem; stayed for two days in Ramallah with one of her students and her husband, with Palestinian guides taking them around; saw the 14-meter-high wall that snakes around the West Bank; talked to Palestinians in refugee camps; and witnessed for herself how the violent Israeli settlers in Hebron dump “furniture, waste” onto the houses of the indigenous Palestinian population.

For the actress it was a study in inhumanities.

“You ask what compelled Rachel to leave her comfortable life and go to Palestine. When you go there, you’ll understand why. How can you not do anything? What’s disturbing me most right now about the world is apathy. The younger ones seem asleep. Their gods are capitalism and consumerism, not truth, justice or peace. What’s fascinating about Rachel Corrie is that she stood for something so much bigger than herself.” 

The one-woman play begins in Rachel’s bedroom in America and moves to Gaza and her appointment with fate. One woman, one voice, one wicked world. Just one truth and then a thousand other truths blooming forth.

Monique saw everything herself in the West Bank. Trees cut. The barrenness of it all. Livelihood stripped away. The armies in the night. “But when I talked to the Palestinians in the refugee camps and villages, they were so optimistic. That was humbling and mind-boggling. They were not angry. They were not bitter. ‘One day there will be peace,’ they said. ‘We don’t have the luxury of being angry. We just have to survive. We cannot give up.’ What an amazing spirit. And they don’t blame the Israeli people, they blame the Israeli government.”

But Monique stresses that there is no political agenda behind the New Voice Company play. “My main responsibility is to give integrity to the words of Rachel Corrie.”

nd the words, the words, what florid arrangement of words.  

In a deceptively assuring e-mail to her father, Rachel, sitting in a house in Rafah with a Palestinian family facing doom, says: “Let me know if you have any ideas about what I should do with the rest of my life… If you want you can write to me as if I was on vacation at a camp on the big island of Hawaii learning to weave. One thing I do to make things easier here is to utterly retreat into fantasies that I am in a Hollywood movie or a sitcom starring Michael J Fox. So feel free to make something up and I’ll be happy to play along.”

Even if she was not in Kansas or Olympia anymore, and the living room does not resemble the set of Family Ties.

Journalist Katharine Viner was struck by a 19-year-old Rachel’s letter to her mom: “I know I scare you... But I want to write and I want to see. And what would I write about if I only stayed within the doll’s house, the flower-world I grew up in?... I love you but I’m growing out of what you gave me... Let me fight my monsters. I love you. You made me. You made me.”

She gazed into her monsters and they gazed back.

One of Monique’s favorite lines by Rachel is: “I was finally awake, forever and ever.”

Monique says, “It’s mind-boggling. When you realize that you’ve been asleep all this time even if your eyes are open, it’s not the way to be.”

You said it, Monique. Neither death nor the ancient agents of oppression could put Rachel Corrie to slumber.  

Monique Wilson concludes: “My growing up was never easy. I had already a lot of responsibilities on stage when I was 10. I was teaching in workshops when I was 14. With this play My Name is Rachel Corrie there was a long deliberation. ‘Can we do this play in Manila? Would people come and watch it?’ Then I looked back upon my young 23-year-old self when I put up New Voice Company, when I had no fears. I said, ‘I am going to produce Angels in America, a seven-hour-long play!’ Everyone said, ‘What?’ I said, ‘Yes, I’m going to do it!’ I had so much audacity. I was once that girl. Why should I lose it now just because I’m 40?”

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My Name is Rachel Corrie is directed by Rito Asilo, with Rossana Abueva as executive producer, light design by Martin Esteva, set design by Denis Lagdameo, technical direction by Jamie Wilson, production design by Tcel Maramag.

For tickets, call the New Voice Company at 896-6695 or 896-5497, e-mail nvc@pldtdsl.net, or visit www.newvoicecompany.com.