Click here to read the New Yorker article by Doreen St. Felix – thanks to Charlotte Lin
The fabulous playwright and USC professor Luis Alfaro posted about experiencing this piece:
I went to see a most upsetting, which is to say successful, theatrical experience called ‘The Ford/Hill Project’.
Four actors, working with earpieces, share the verbatim transcripts of both Anita Hill’s 1991, and Christine Blasey Ford’s 2018 testimonies during the Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh.
Oof. It is a stomach-turning upsetting piece of necessary theatre staged to beautifully complicated minimalist effect. If theatre is indeed in its retraction mode, I suggest we all stage shows with nine chairs to great dramatic effect like this one did.
It is not only a powerful study of character, but an American history of power, abuse, and its language. Both women endure an overwhelming constructed punishment for simply telling their truth. There is so much we need to unlearn if we can ever dream of a healthy country, especially in this time of such extreme corruption.
Clocking in at a little over an hour, it was just enough to have me in total catharsis mode.
Brava/o/x to creators Lee Sunday Evans, artistic director of Waterwell, and the legendary actor, Elizabeth Marvel, who let this riveting piece of history sink into us as we ponder race, class, sex and all the harassments. Especially while we watch the men put on Supreme Court robes and take their place of seniority among the nine chairs. What a gut punch.
Brava to long time NYC pal, Melissa Kievman, who I had not seen in at least fifteen years, doing a tremendous producing job on this most important spectacle.
I would tell you to go, one last show tonight, but it’s sold out, as it should be.