VERY FINE PEOPLE

In August 2017, The Unite the Right: Neo-Nazis, neo-Confederates, White Nationalists, and Aryan Identitarians gather in Charlottesville, Virginia to protest the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee. They march carrying tiki torches and chant “Jews will not replace us.” One attendee drives his car into a crowd of counter-protestors, killing one woman and injuring dozens. President Donald Trump says that there were “very fine people on both sides.”

 

Then, October 2021, Sines v. Kessler: the rally organizers are sued in civil court by nine injured parties. The legal question: can the leaders of the Alt-Right be held responsible for the violence their followers commit? Is violence the inevitable result of ethno-nationalist rhetoric? The trial is a baffling, chaotic farce, revealing our legal system’s impotence in the face of white nationalist organizing.

 

This performance is part of an ongoing series of workshops adapting the trial’s transcripts for the stage. This showing centers the story of plaintiff Natalie Romero, grievously injured and traumatized by the events.