
VERY FINE PEOPLE
verbatim transcripts from the trial of the charlottesville white nationalists
(work-in-progress #4)
April 12th and 13th: 2 PM
47 Great Jones Street
ABOUT:
In August 2017, Neo-Nazis, neo-Confederates, White Nationalists, and Aryan Identitarians gathered in Charlottesville, Virginia to protest the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee. They marched carrying tiki torches and chant “Jews will not replace us.” One attendee drove his car into a crowd of counter-protestors, killing one woman and injuring dozens. President Donald Trump said that there were “very fine people on both sides.”
Then in October 2021, the rally organizers were sued in civil court. 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 was 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 sociologist Peter Simi, who is called in to decode the Alt-Right’s internal communications.
CREDITS:
Directed by James Rutherford
Featured performances by Rami Margron, Luis Moreno, Nadia Sepsenwol, Charise Greene, Jacq Gregg, Patrick Harrison, JC Vasquez
Stage managed by Isaac VanCuren
Sound design by Andrew Fox
Costume design by Lara de Bruijn
Video design by Lacey Erb
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