Two Supreme Court confirmation hearings held nearly three decades apart are being staged side by side this fall in Downtown Brooklyn, as “The Ford/Hill Project” takes over BAM Fisher from September 8 through September 20. The production is built entirely from verbatim transcripts, recreating the 1991 testimony of law professor Anita Hill and the 2018 testimony of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, two moments that reshaped how the country talks about power, credibility, and gender inside Senate hearing rooms.
According to the Brooklyn Eagle, the play recreates what it calls two pivotal political moments 30 years apart, exploring historic catalysts that echo into the present. The four-person cast includes Gabby Beans as Anita Hill, Elizabeth Marvel as Christine Blasey Ford, Teagle Bougere as Clarence Thomas, and Josh Hamilton as Brett Kavanaugh, with the show co-created and directed by Lee Sunday Evans, a multi-Obie winner who also helped create the piece alongside Marvel.
A Structure Built on Transcripts, Not Scripts
Because the play is assembled entirely from official hearing transcripts, its dramatic tension comes from the words themselves rather than invented dialogue. The 1991 Senate Judiciary Committee hearings, in which Hill testified that Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas had sexually harassed her, drew an estimated 20 million television households before the Senate confirmed Thomas in a narrow 52-48 vote, according to CBS News. Twenty-seven years later, Ford testified before the same committee that nominee Brett Kavanaugh had assaulted her in 1982, a hearing that ended in an 11-10 party-line committee vote and a one-week supplemental FBI investigation before Kavanaugh's confirmation, as reported by PBS NewsHour.
The production's staging choices are as deliberate as its source material. TheaterMania notes that the four-actor ensemble uses cross-gender casting, with male performers briefly stepping into the roles of Hill and Ford to examine whether men can empathize with female victims of sexual misconduct. That fluid rotation, paired with minimalist staging, keeps the focus squarely on the courtroom-style language rather than theatrical spectacle.
From Woolly Mammoth to a Brooklyn Black Box
“The Ford/Hill Project” did not originate at BAM. The show debuted in October 2024 as a co-presentation between Washington, D.C.'s Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company and New York's The Public Theater, launching on October 7, 2024, to coincide with the opening day of that term's Supreme Court session, according to background from The Public Theater. Before arriving in Downtown Brooklyn, the play also had a January 2026 run at La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club as part of the Under the Radar Festival, an annual showcase for experimental and contemporary work.
Director Lee Sunday Evans arrives at BAM with an existing relationship to the venue. TDF notes that Evans has previously directed work on BAM stages, including Geoff Sobelle's “HOME,” “Farmhouse/Whorehouse,” and “FOOD,” as part of BAM's Next Wave Festival. Evans and Waterwell, the theater company behind the production, are known for building verbatim legal dramas from primary-source records; the company's earlier work, “The Courtroom,” re-enacted an immigrant's deportation proceedings and was co-created with Arian Moayed in 2019 before being adapted into a 2022 Tribeca Film Festival feature film, per Concord Theatricals.
Post-Show Talks and a Trauma-Informed Approach
Every performance at BAM Fisher will be followed by an informal discussion with thought leaders, according to the Brooklyn Eagle. That structure fits Waterwell's broader approach to the material: because the play handles sensitive topics surrounding sexual harassment and gender-based violence, the company provides a professionally staffed decompression space for theatergoers alongside its post-show public discussions, per event details from Middlebury College, one of several academic venues where the project has toured.
Beyond traditional stages, the production has been presented at institutions including Quinnipiac University, Southern Connecticut State University in partnership with Long Wharf Theatre, and Middlebury College, aiming to foster community dialogue on power, race, and gender, according to American Theatre. That academic touring model runs parallel to the show's professional theater engagements, suggesting Waterwell sees the piece as civic programming as much as entertainment.
Tickets and Access at BAM Fisher
Tickets for the Downtown Brooklyn run range from $45 to $65, and BAM Fisher offers full elevator access across all levels of the Rockwell Place venue, per TDF's listing for the show. The engagement is limited, running just under two weeks from September 8 to September 20.
The Brooklyn run also lands amid renewed local attention on Clarence Thomas himself. Hoodline reported in February that Thomas canceled an appearance at American University's law school over a security concern, with student protesters outside distributing flyers containing excerpts of Hill's 1991 testimony. Separately, prosecutor Rachel Mitchell, who questioned Ford during the 2018 hearings, was mentioned in earlier Hoodline coverage of exonerated Arizona man Ray Krone's advocacy work, a reminder of how far the Ford and Kavanaugh hearing's cast of characters has traveled into other corners of public life.
