At 1.45pm on 12 August 2017 white supremacist James Alex Fields Jnr deliberately drove his car into a crowd of people who had been protesting against a Unite the Right rally in a Charlottesville park.
Many people were injured; 32 year old Heather Heyer was killed.
‘Everything was flying through the air. People were flying, shoes. The sound of metal on people, metal on metal.’
The crime had been preceded by two days of confrontations, many of them violent, between various alt-right groups (one of whose leaders had obtained a permit to hold the 12 August rally), counter protesters and the police. The initial spark for the protest had been the plan to remove the city’s statue of Thomas Jefferson, but the alt-right swiftly expanded the scope of the rally to cover its hatred of non-white people, immigrants, Jews, the LGBT+ community, and women who didn’t stay at home ‘honouring’ their men. During the protests two state troopers also died.
In 2017 Priyanka Shetty, an Indian student, was enrolled on a Master of Fine Arts and Acting course at the University of Virginia. She decided to investigate the events of those two days, and the people behind them.
Having looked at numerous far right websites and social media, and dug around in the murky depths of the Dark Web, Shetty wanted to talk to Charlottesville residents about their thoughts on the city, its people, and what they remembered about those two days in August. The University of Virginia did not authorise her investigation. Based on her findings, Shetty has written a partly verbatim show; #Charlottesville premiered at The Keegan Theatre in Washington DC, and now it has come to the Pleasance Courtyard.
The names of the people Shetty quotes are projected onto the back wall of Pleasance Bunker Two. They include a Peace Corps Recruiter, a musician, an undergraduate, a waitress, a Conservative radio host and the Dean of the university. They all love the city, but interestingly, it is only the waitress, Tamra (whose family has lived in Charlottesville since the 18th century) who points out that it consists of pockets of population; each pocket lives in its own bubble, they rarely if ever interact. All of the speakers say the city is friendly, but several refer to simmering interracial tensions.
Shetty has also studied the transcript records of the court cases, criminal and civil, that followed the violence. She plays the judge and counsel for both plaintiff and defendants, taking up different positions in the room to differentiate between them. The defendants’ argument centres on two crucial points, the first being that the First Amendment protects Americans’ right to free speech. Their counsel happily admits that his clients are unpleasant people with highly offensive views – but that it not a crime. His second argument is that Fields was acting alone when he drove into the crowd. He had nothing to do with the others, there was no conspiracy and there is therefore no case to answer.
Further interspersed are Shetty’s own conversations with Susan, the Chair of her university department. Susan dismisses Shetty’s complaints about racist comments made by another class member. Shetty also asks why she has not been cast in either of the department’s productions; again she does not receive a satisfactory answer, but is instead fobbed off with the offer of a role in a community production.
‘It will be a lifelong struggle for you and there’s nothing I can do about that.’
Shetty has researched the alt-right groups involved in the events of 11/12 August in depth. Again she uses projected images to profile the ringleaders while she quotes their words. I did find this part of the show a little confusing, as Shetty seemed to jump from one alt-right person to another, then back to the residents, then back to the courtroom scenes, very quickly at times so that I was not entirely sure who was saying what or indeed who belonged to which organisation. The voices of Kevin, the musician, and of the somewhat pompous counsel for the defence in court, were clearly differentiated and identifiable, but most of the women Shetty had chatted to sounded more or less the same to me.
It was also, unfortunately, sometimes difficult to see the words projected on the wall. It’s likely that this would work much better in a more traditional theatre, where all audience members are facing one way. In the Bunker people are sitting round three sides of a square, and the side seats are not best placed to see the projections.
The Charlottesville residents are also asked for their recollections of the violence. They describe the lit torches the protestors held; the air being ‘thick with Kerosene,’ There was constant chanting,
‘You will not replace us!’
They watched as counter protesters were beaten.
Shetty draws parallels between the increasing hard line racism in the US, the personal racism she encountered in her department, and the failure of President Trump to condemn the white supremacists in Charlottesville. She does an excellent and very funny impression of the President, who notoriously first stated that ‘there were very fine people on both sides in Charlottesville’, then immediately attempted to divert attention to his claims that the country was ‘doing very well.’ But although this scene brings some welcome light humour to the show, its content is of course frightening.
Shetty shows pictures of Trump and the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi embracing; India too is experiencing a shift to the right and towards an authoritarian style of government. Modi has even started saying ‘Make India Great Again.’ Another celebrated democracy is threatened.
Just when we might feel bogged down in all the political and legal facts, Shetty reminds us that a young woman died on 12 August. Heather Heyer’s mother describes in agonising detail her desperate attempts to find out what has happened to her daughter; the phone calls to all the hospitals, the journey into town. Waiting for her husband to arrive, then finding that the hospital has already moved Heather’s body. Heather’s parents did not see her until the day before her funeral,
‘It’s like an amputation. You can survive it, you can adapt, but you’re still an amputee.’
It’s not just about placards and shouting. Real people, fellow human beings, are being attacked, injured and sometimes killed.
A favourite quote of Heather’s was,
‘If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention.’
Very few people were paying attention before 11 August 2017. Are we paying more attention now? Are we outraged, or are we complacent in the rise of fascism in the US and on our own doorsteps?
#Charlottesville is a thought-provoking show and Shetty is an accomplished actor. For me there were perhaps too many different threads to manage within the short time constraints of a Fringe show, and I wonder if the court scenes could be abbreviated or cut to allow more time to hear the people’s voices. Courts can only do so much, especially in the US where many judges are political appointees. In the end it is the people who need to take a stand against the rise of white supremacy in all its forms, to wake up and pay attention before it’s too late.
#Charlottesville is at Pleasance Courtyard (Bunker Two), 60 Pleasance (Venue 33) at 12.20pm every day until 25 August. Please note: there is no show on Wednesday 13 August.
