Divamensch
saw The Ford/Hil Project at BAM on Sept 10 2026. It's a play by Lee Sunday Evans and Elizabeth Marvel. They took the transcript from Anita Hill's testimony at Clarence Thomas's confirmation hearing, the transcript from Christine Blasey Ford's testimony at Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation hearing, and various other bits and assembled them into a play for four actors. It was directed Lee Sunday Evans.
The cast was a Black actress (Gabby Beans), a Black actor (Teagle F. Bougere), a white actor (Josh Hamilton), and a white actress (Elizabeth Marvel). Please note that Marvel is the only actor in the BAM production that is in the video above.
The play opened with an audio recording of the phrase that most sticks with me from these two hearings. Senator Patrick Leahy asked Ford what her strongest memory was of the incident. Her answer was, "Indelible in the hippocampus is the laughter, the uproarious laughter between the two, and their having fun at my expense." I believe we then heard a brief recording from Hill's testimony but I don't remember what it was, Ford's words were beating too loudly in my brain.
The play started, as you might expect, with Beans playing the role of Hill and Marvel playing the role of Ford. The two men played the person questioning them. We often ricocheted between the two hearings. The opening testimonies of the women, giving an overview of their lives and the experiences that brought them to the Senate, was intercut in an intense and chilling way. Eventually we did a seamless pivot to the male actors playing Thomas and Kavanaugh, with the women playing the people questioning them. The women were playing various questioners (often male, I expect) but since they had been intially presented as Hill and Ford it felt like a bit of turning the tables to me, a little poetic justice that these women were given the opportunity to directly question those men.
The most unsettling moment of the play happened about halfway through - - the two men were sitting on chairs, they had been playing Thomas and Kavanaugh. Then, imperceptively, they switched to playing Hill and Ford. The Black actor playing Hill, the white actor playing Ford. Their voices and body language didn't change at all, it crept up on you, it took me maybe a minute to realize that's what had happened. I was confused at the time and continue to be confused about why Evans and Marvel chose to do that, especially since Beans and Marvel didn't ever play Thomas or Kavanaugh. I really and truly think they did that to confuse and disorient the audience. If that was their intention, they succeeded, big time.
All four actors were extraordinary (Hamilton was the only one I had seen before, I was thrilled to see him in this) but Beans and Marvel of course had more difficult roles to play. They were exceptionally strong at conveying the deep discomfort of Hill and Ford and how effortful the process was for them. Can you even imagine the fortitude it would take to not just tell this story and revisit this horrific period of their lives, but to do it in front of the Senate and in front of television cameras transmitting it live around the world.
The play ended with the two male actors going to the back of the stage and putting on long black robes.