"Rachel Corrie" production in New York is postponed

Film star Alan Rickman is protesting an Off Broadway theater's decision not to bring his hit London play "My Name is Rachel Corrie" to New York this spring.

"My Name is Rachel Corrie" was written by Rickman and an editor of The Guardian newspaper of London, Katharine Viner.

It's based on diary entries and e-mails by Corrie, a political activist from Olympia who died in 2003 in a refugee camp near the Egyptian border while protesting Israel's demolition of Palestinian homes there.

Rickman told The Guardian that the New York Theatre Workshop's decision was an act of "censorship born out of fear." New York Theatre Workshop director Jim Nicola said the play, which his company had not formerly announced it would present, is being postponed due to the current "very edgy" political situation in Israel.

"Daughter Courage," a different play about Corrie by the Vermont troupe Bread and Puppet Theater, will play at Seattle's Consolidated Works arts center March 8-11.