The idea was both brilliant and brazen: to juxtapose in a theater piece the public testimonies of Anita Hill and Christine Blasey Ford about the sexual harassment and sexual assault perpetrated against them in private by two men who went on to lifetime appointments on the U.S. Supreme Court. Like two Cassandras speaking truth to Senate committees determined to disbelieve and disregard them, they each foretold the character of a man — Clarence Thomas in Hill’s case, Brett Kavanaugh in Ford’s — whose subsequent judicial decisions would fuck over women across the nation. The inspired idea to revisit these job interviews side-by-side became The Ford/Hill Project — created by Lee Sunday Evans and Elizabeth Marvel and directed by Evans — a Waterwell theater production that played two nights at Woolly Mammoth Theatre prior to a brief run at The Public Theater in New York. The gripping script, dramatically spliced together from transcripts of the hearings — was embodied by an able ensemble — Eric Berryman, Chris Henry Coffey, Amber Iman, Elizabeth Marvel — who all the while wore in-ear receivers through which they heard edited recordings of the words they then spoke aloud. The effect of listening to these actors’ matched inflections was unlike ordinary oral interpretation; more profoundly, it was an audio-vérité channeling of consequential authenticity, and it pulsed with the frisson of resistance to male power. Amber Iman as Anita Hill Hill and Elizabeth Marvel as Christine Blasey Ford in ‘The Ford/Hill Project.’ Photo by Cameron Whitman.   Said Ford of being sexually assaulted at a party in high school by a drunken Kavanaugh: Brett groped me and tried to take off my clothes.… I believed he was going to rape me. I tried to yell for help. When I did, Brett put his hand over my mouth to stop me from screaming. This was what terrified me the most, and has had the most lasting impact on my life. It was hard for me to breathe, and I thought that Brett was accidentally going to kill me. Said Hill of being sexually harassed by Thomas when he was her boss: Judge Thomas … would call me into his office.… After a brief discussion of work, he would turn the conversation to a discussion of sexual matters. His conversations were very vivid. He spoke about acts that he had seen in pornographic films involving such matters as women having sex with animals and films showing group sex or rape scenes. He talked about pornographic materials depicting individuals with large penises or large breasts involving various sex acts. On several occasions, Thomas told me graphically of his own sexual prowess…. I told him that I did not want to talk about this subject… My efforts to change the subject were rarely successful. There’s more. Much more. And because the script intercuts quickly between snippets of speech from Ford and Hill, from their Senate interrogators, and from the two ignominious nominees, there is a momentum in the work that mounts with emotion and portent. The black-curtained stage is set with simply a semicircle of wooden folding chairs (of which there are nine, foreshadowing the bench the two accused will ascend to). Generally, Amber Iman portrays Hill; Elizabeth Marvel, Ford; Eric Berryman, Thomas; and Chris Henry Coffey, Kavanaugh (all with compelling credibility). But there is a striking scene when the two male actors are seated as witnesses and speak the words of Ford and Hill while the two female actors grill them in the personas of male senators. Though this surprising gender reversal unsettles and somewhat softens the work’s otherwise uncompromising clarity about how structural male supremacy and misogyny are playing out before our eyes, the switch adds a nice nuance: It models visibly and viscerally — as theater can when it wants — empathic identification with another who is different from oneself rather than domination or derogation of another in order to seem a self. TOP: Eric Berryman, Elizabeth Marvel, Chris Henry Coffey, and Amber Iman; ABOVE: Eric Berryman as Justice Clarence Thomas, Elizabeth Marvel as Christine Blasey Ford, Amber Iman as Anita Hill, and Chris Henry Coffey as Justice Brett Kavanaugh, in ‘The Ford/Hill Project.’ Photos by Cameron Whitman. Neither Kavanaugh nor Thomas listened to the testimony of the women whom they wronged, we learn. No walking in another’s shoes for these dudes. Instead, the played-back record shows Kavanaugh’s and Thomas’ apoplectic denials, their enraged sense of entitlement to zero accountability, their shameless refusal to own their actions and apologize — and The Ford/Hill Project puts that callousness in their characters center stage. In this respect, The Ford/Hill Project performs one of theater’s most noble and necessary functions: to shine a light on character itself, to attune the populace to how a person’s acts betoken who they are, and to prompt the polis to pay attention. What The Ford/Hill Project now holds up to collective discernment is how a particularly gendering prototype of character — belligerent, bullying, deliberately heartless, unabashedly unrepentant — has become normalized and valorized on the national stage, such that now the prospect of another such presidency looms. One of the most impactful moments in the show is wordless. Iman as Hill and Marvel as Ford, who up to this point have been speaking presentationally to the audience, across the 30 years that separate their testimonies, suddenly turn to face each other and look into each other’s eyes in real time. The moment reads as a silent symbolic bond of unheeded bravery that history has redeemed — and that The Ford/Hill Project has made presciently present. Running Time: 70 minutes, no intermission. The Ford/Hill Project (a Waterwell production, presented by Woolly Mammoth in association with the Public Theater) played October 7 and 8 (invited), 2024, at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, 641 D St NW, Washington, DC. The playbill for The Ford/Hill Project is online here. There are resources for survivors here. The Ford/Hill Project will be performed next from October 16 to 20, 2024, at the Public Theater in New York. The Ford/Hill Project A Waterwell Production Presented by Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company and The Public Theater Created by Lee Sunday Evans and Elizabeth Marvel Directed by Lee Sunday Evans FEATURING Eric Berryman, Chris Henry Coffey, Amber Iman, Elizabeth Marvel Sound Design: Jeffrey Salerno + Mikhail Fiskel Stage Manager: Katie Young Costume Coordinator: Amanda Roberge Associate Director & Creative Line Producer: Maya Davis Casting Consultants: Rori Bergman + Karlee Fomalont