A play about a young American student who was killed by an Israeli bulldozer while trying to stop the destruction of a Palestinian home in the Gaza Strip will open in New York in October, several months after another theater pulled the show from its schedule, drawing charges of censorship.

Producers Pam Pariseau and Dena Hammerstein said that they will present the U.S. premiere of London’s Royal Court Theatre production of the one-woman show “My Name Is Rachel Corrie” at the Minetta Lane Theatre. Previews are scheduled to start Oct. 5 for a 48-performance run scheduled to end Nov. 19.


The real Rachel Corrie participates in a 2003 protest. Actor Alan Rickman has turned her story into a one-woman play that open in New York in October. (Photo/Associated Press)

Director Alan Rickman and Katherine Viner, features editor of The Guardian newspaper in London, put the one-woman play together from the diaries, letters and e-mails of Corrie, a 23-year-old human rights activist who died in the southern Gaza town of Rafah in March 2003.

The play opened at the Royal Court Theatre in London in April 2005 to generally positive reviews, returned for an encore engagement and was nominated for an Olivier Award.

“Rachel Corrie” returned for a limited run at London’s Playhouse Theatre in the West End this spring after the New York Theatre Workshop, one of the city’s leading off-Broadway spaces, indefinitely suspended a production scheduled to open in March.

At the time, Rickman said the Theatre Workshop had canceled the run and accused it of “censorship born out of fear.” But in a March 14 statement posted on the company’s Web site, Theatre Workshop artistic director James C. Nicola said the company had sought only more time to “find ways to let Rachel’s words rise above the polemics.”

“We regret that requesting more time to achieve that goal was interpreted as failing to fulfill a commitment and, worse, as censorship,” he said.

Corrie traveled to the Middle East with the International Solidarity Movement, an activist group that tries to stop Israeli military operations in the Palestinian territories. An Israeli investigation ruled the death accidental. Since her death, Corrie has become a divisive figure in the United States, with supporters hailing her bravery and commitment and opponents condemning her as foolish and naive.

“We wanted to present a balanced portrait,” Rickman said Thursday in a statement. “The activist part of her life is absolutely matched by the imaginative part of her life. I’ve no doubt at all that had she lived, there would have been novels and plays pouring out of her.”