Bringing Rachel back to us

Rachel's death isn't played out on stage, but many personal moments are, and these were hard for her family to deal with. "I haven't been able to get through the part where she's reading the email from me without breaking up," says Craig sadly.

In his last email to his daughter, Craig writes: "I am afraid for you ... but I'm also very proud ... [fathers are] hardwired not to want our children, no matter how old they are, no matter how brave, and no matter how much good they are doing, to be subject to so much threat or even witness to so much suffering. I love you, and please take care!"

How will they cope when it's all over and they're back home? Cindy Corrie blinks back the tears furiously. "I'm sorry," she says. "I think there will be a bit of grieving again. The play really does bring Rachel back. But it's also right that we move on; we can't be there, watching it every night."

In the days after her death, extracts from Rachel's emails appeared in the press here and caught the attention of the actor Alan Rickman, who has directed and co-edited the play with journalist Katharine Viner.

The Corries were asked if they would consider allowing their daughter's numerous journals and emails to be used for a play. Gifted, clever and funny, her writings on everything from boyfriends (she didn't have a serious boyfriend at the time of her death but friends say she had started to become close to a fellow activist) to the seriousness of Middle East politics leapt from the page.

"Almost immediately after she was killed I wanted to get her words out," says Cindy. "Her emails had such an impact on us because they changed the way we felt about the Israeli situation. But it was a very difficult time so we didn't want to do anything right away."

About a year after Rachel was killed, her sister, Sarah, was finally able to bring herself to open the journals. For two weeks, she spent one day reading them and crying, and the next furiously typing up the pages so they could be sent to Rickman and Viner in London.

Cindy and Craig Corrie couldn't read the script for days after it arrived. "There were times when I would need to get closer to her and I would read one of her journals for a bit but then I'd put it away," says Cindy. "I had a certain fear reading the script. One thing that has happened is Rachel was either idealised or demonised and it was important for us that she was humanised."

After her death, the Palestinians immediately held her up as a martyr: new parents named their daughters after her and posters of the young, blonde, beautiful woman appeared alongside pictures of the hundreds of Palestinians who had died in the intifada. But in the West, internet bloggers called her a "traitor" and "enemy of America and the Jews".

Many dismiss her as a naive dogooder who had no business being there, but it is clear that Rachel wasn't the sort of person who could sit by and do nothing. "This has to stop," she wrote in an email to her mother on 27 February 2003. "I still really want to dance around to Pat Benatar and have boyfriends and make comics for my co-workers. But I also want this to stop. Disbelief and horror is what I feel ... I am disappointed that this is the base reality of our world and that we, in fact, participate in it."

Rachel was 10 when she wrote a poem about how "children everywhere are suffering". She was at university when the World Trade Center collapsed and, in those panic-fuelled months after September 11, campaigned against both the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.

When it became clear that Iraq was about to be invaded, she decided to go to the West Bank, convinced Israeli forces would step up their campaign while the world's attention was elsewhere. "I was worried about her safety," says Craig.

"But you can't really ask your child to be something less than they are. Before she went, I said: 'You don't have to go, nobody will think any less of you if you pull out now,' but she was determined. She said she was frightened, but that she had to do it, to see if she had the courage to do it. And she did."

Her parents didn't know that she was acting as a "human shield", but they did know their daughter was in danger. "I was very worried, but every time I spoke to her, she sounded more confident," says Cindy.

"When she rang me on her first night, her voice was quite shaky but, after several weeks, she had grown in confidence." The last time Cindy spoke to her daughter, she sounded happy and as passionate as ever about what she was doing. Five days later, she was dead.

The first the family knew about her death was via the television news. A friend had called Sarah to offer her condolences and, with a sense of dread, she had switched on the news to see reports that a local woman had been killed. She called her parents. Rachel's body was flown home that week.

An investigation, led by the chief of the general staff of the Israeli defence
force, cleared Israeli forces and closed the case. Devastated, the Corries are campaigning for a full, independent inquiry. The fighting and the campaigning provide a welcome focus.

"I remember finding a bag of Rachel's holey socks," says Cindy. "I took an old sock out and I started to cry because I am afraid I won't remember these small things about Rachel if I don't somehow record them. I have a real fear of that happening and the play is the one thing we have.

"You never get used to the loss of a child, the missing her is always there. There are days when I look out of the window and remember Rachel running across the grass when she was a child. We're lucky to have so much of her with us, especially her writing. The anniversary of her death is always hard, but I also look on it as a day to celebrate and to be proud of our daughter - because that was the day she stood up for what she believed in."

My Name is Rachel Corrie is at the Royal Court, Sloane Square, SW1, until 30 April (020 7565 5000).