The Courtroom Vividly Reenacts One
Woman's Deportation Proceedings

Does Your Vote Matter? Before The Justice Theater Project's Oct. 2-18 production of The Courtroom: A Reenactment of One Woman's Deportation Proceedings began, the audience was reminded of an upcoming civic duty, our right to vote. Nonpartisan voting guides were available in the lobby of the Umstead Park United Church of Christ in Raleigh.

I wrote down a question: "Does your vote matter?" It is a question that we hear often, usually from people wondering whether one vote can make a difference in a system this large. The Courtroom gave me another way to consider it. If voting carries so little weight, why are we so careful about who has access to it?

Directed by Patrick Torres for The Justice Theater Project, The Courtroom is constructed by Arian Moayedfrom the actual court transcripts of an immigration case involving Elizabeth Keathley. Veniza Catlett plays Elizabeth, alongside Phillip Andrew Solano as her husband, John. I think that is about as much of the circumstances as someone needs to know before seeing it. The arguments are part of the experience, and I appreciated being able to listen without already knowing where everything would lead.

Catlett is compelling as Elizabeth. There is a vulnerability in the position that her character occupies without Catlett needing to play Elizabeth as helpless. Around her are attorneys, judges, legal arguments, and pages of complicated language. Catlett keeps the person at the center of all of it visible.

The courtroom itself is intentionally restrained. The set is simple. The lighting transitions are subtle. The attorneys and judges hold scripts as they perform. At first, I simply thought the pages made the proceedings feel more realistic. Actual courtrooms are filled with people referring to documents, looking down to find language, and working through information. It did not have the polished rhythm that we have learned to associate with courtrooms on television.

After the performance, I read Patrick Torres' director's note and learned that what I had noticed was intentional. Keeping the scripts in hand is a requirement of the original work. Elizabeth and John are the only two people in the production who perform without them. Torres explains that the choice keeps the couple fully present while the rest of the courtroom remains connected to the pages through which their circumstances are being interpreted.

That context gave the choice even greater meaning for me. There are people experiencing the consequences, and there are people reading the words that will help determine those consequences.

I had a similar reaction to the casting. Several women portray men from the actual proceedings, and there is no attempt to disguise that. Shana Fisher portrays attorney Richard Hanus, Amelia Lumpkin portrays Gregory Guckenberger, DeLoris Lowman Crane takes on Immigration Judge Craig Zerbe, and Celeste Hinnant and Callie Hammond portray Chief Judge Frank Easterbrook and Judge Michael Stephen Kanne. Spencer Matthews portrays Judge Kenneth Ripple.

I later learned from Patrick Torres' director's note that this was intentional as well. The original creators call for diverse casting rather than fidelity to the identities of the people represented. I liked discovering that after seeing it, because the choice had already worked on me before I knew its purpose. Eventually, I was no longer thinking about a woman portraying a man. I was listening to the authority that each person represented and the argument that each was making.

Among the strong performances, Celeste Hinnant as Chief Judge Frank Easterbrook felt especially well matched to the role. Her delivery had an authority that did not need to be announced. When the court's decision is delivered, hearing the order through her voice gave the moment a chill. The words were already consequential. Hinnant understood how to let their weight land without adding more than they needed.

The production uses music sparingly, which I appreciated, although some of its dreamier qualities did not always fit the human tension that I was experiencing in the courtroom. Still, the overall restraint of the production allowed the transcripts and performances to remain at the center.

As an audience member, the performance had me thinking about responsibility.

There is a moment when Elizabeth's attorney argues that she had "merely signed where she was told." Her reliance on a government official also becomes part of the argument.

We can say that people are responsible for what they sign, and I believe there is truth in that. But I also had to ask myself how many citizens read every document that they sign. How often do we ask the person behind a counter what something means? How often do we trust that the person representing an institution understands its processes better than we do?

Recognizing that does not eliminate individual responsibility. It does make responsibility harder to place entirely on one person.

Government is made up of people, too. People write the questions. People design the applications. People explain the rules. People interpret the answers. People make mistakes. The person completing the form can misunderstand something; and the person administering it can misunderstand something, too.

A language barrier adds another dimension. We talk a great deal about the barriers at our borders, but there are barriers within them, too. Forms, legal terminology, and administrative processes can be difficult even for citizens who have spoken English their entire lives. Some people read carefully. Some do not. Some misunderstand. Some knowingly take advantage of systems. Those are human behaviors, not behaviors that belong exclusively to immigrants.

This is where the question of voting became more interesting to me.

Voting is important enough that we establish rules around who has the right to participate. Protecting that access matters. But if the integrity of voting requires keeping people who are not eligible from participating, then there is also a responsibility to make the path into that system clear.

If voting does not matter, why are we so concerned with protecting who has access to it?

The case reveals something about the significance that we have already assigned to a ballot. Citizenship determines access to federal elections, and crossing that boundary can carry serious consequences. Yet, what happens when the institutions responsible for maintaining that boundary also contribute to confusion about where it is?

I do not think that we have to choose between protecting elections and having compassion for human error. Perhaps, protecting the integrity of voting also means creating systems clear enough to protect both the election and the people navigating them.

How do we protect the significance of citizenship, while making it difficult for someone who is not eligible to mistakenly enter a process reserved for citizens? When errors occur, how do we distinguish deception from misunderstanding? When the government contributes to an error, what responsibility does the government carry?

Those questions do not weaken a system. They are part of reviewing whether the system is working as intended.

They also made me think about why people come to America in the first place.

Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are among the words that we use to describe American ideals. People have crossed oceans and borders, because of what this country represents to them and what they believe may be possible here.

Our history also requires us to acknowledge that law and justice have not always moved together. Laws have restricted voting, citizenship, movement, and opportunity for groups of people. Some of the freedoms that Americans now consider fundamental exist, because people challenged systems that were lawful at the time.

That history does not mean laws have no value. It makes the responsibility attached to creating and administering them greater.

It made me wonder what gives us dominion over another person's pursuit of those same ideals. A country can have borders. Citizenship can carry rights and responsibilities. Laws can establish who has access to those rights. But if we claim life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as American values, then the way that we administer our laws should matter, alongside the laws themselves.

That is another reason that the diverse casting resonated with me. Our history includes periods when women and racial minorities were denied full participation in systems that they were nevertheless expected to live under. Here, different faces and voices occupy positions of legal authority and interpret the words governing someone else's life. The casting does not need to announce what that image means. Our history provides enough context.

None of this made me see The Courtroom as an attack on the American legal system. I saw an opportunity to examine what we expect from it.

We can believe in laws and still review how they operate. We can value citizenship, while considering the humanity of people pursuing it. We can hold individuals responsible, while recognizing that institutions are operated by equally imperfect human beings. We can protect the integrity of voting, while asking whether the systems surrounding it are doing enough to prevent people from entering it incorrectly.

That brings me back to the voting guides in the lobby.

Maybe the significance of a vote is revealed partly by how carefully we protect access to it. Our votes also help determine who will write laws, administer government, and make decisions about what happens when the rules encounter circumstances that are not simple.

An election asks us what we want for ourselves. Our responsibility as citizens should also leave room to consider what the systems that we choose mean for people who are not us.

If life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are values that we still claim as American ideals, the real test may come when applying them becomes complicated.

The Courtroom gave me a reason to think about the value of my vote from both directions: the responsibility attached to having access to it and the responsibility attached to deciding what I do with it.

THE COURTROOM: A REENACTMENT OF ONE WOMAN'S DEPORTATION PROCEEDINGS (In Person at 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday, and 3:30 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 9-11 and 16-18, plus 2 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 17th), created from transcripts arranged by Arian Moayed and directed by Patrick Torres (The Justice Theater Project at the Umstead Park United Church of Christ in Raleigh). TRAILERS: https://www.facebook.com/reel/1409647083882937. JTP VIDEOS: https://www.youtube.com/@thejusticetheaterproject. DIGITAL PROGRAM: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/669acbfdf6794f7c20315491/t/6abfcc0753d73167acbff129/1790954503664/The+Courtroom+Program.pdf. PRESENTER: https://www.thejusticetheaterproject.org/, https://www.facebook.com/Justicetheater, https://www.instagram.com/justicetheaterproject, https://x.com/JusticeTProject, and https://www.youtube.com/@thejusticetheaterproject. 2026-27 SEASON (Outside the Lines): https://www.thejusticetheaterproject.org/season-2627. VENUE: https://www.upucc.org/, https://www.facebook.com/UmsteadParkUCC, https://www.instagram.com/umsteadparkucc/, https://bsky.app/profile/upucc.bsky.social, and https://www.youtube.com/@umsteadparkucc7913. DIRECTIONS: https://www.google.com/maps/. RELATED EVENTS: Click here and scroll down. TICKETS: $29 ($10 students and educators and $26 seniors and active-duty military personnel), plus taxes and fees. Click here to buy tickets. INFORMATION: 919-264-7089 or tickets@thejusticetheaterproject.org. PLEASE DONATE TO: The Justice Theater Project.

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