30 years apart, Anita Hill and Christine Blasey Ford provoked a reckoning about who is given the power to shape the future of our country by telling the story of one of the most private moments of their lives in one of the most public settings imaginable. With an ensemble of four actors speaking from the verbatim transcripts of these pivotal hearings, these two women’s stories can be seen side by side in a new light in Waterwell’s illuminating production.

Note: This performance includes infrequent strong language and themes/discussions of racial and gender-based violence.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Elizabeth Marvel has won four Obie Awards for her Off-Broadway work, most notably for the title role in Ivo Van Hove’s 2004 production of Hedda Gabler. Most recently, she starred in the Off-Broadway production of Phillip Roth’s Sabbath’s Theater. Of her numerous Broadway roles, she is best known for her portrayal of Brooke Wyeth in Other Desert Cities, a role which she originated off-Broadway. Marvel recently starred in the Apple TV+ limited series HBO Max limited series Presumed Innocent, Love and Death at HBO Max and the Hulu limited series, The Dropout. Her numerous television credits include Peacock’s Mrs. Davis, Hulu’s Helstrom, Showtime’s Homeland, Netflix’s House of Cards. She can most recently be seen in Blitz Bazawule’s adaptation of The Color Purple for Warner Bros. Upcoming, she will be seen alongside Viola Davis in the Amazon Prime Video action-thriller film, G20. Marvel is a graduate of the Juilliard School.

Lee Sunday Evans is a two-time Obie Award-winning Director and the Artistic Director of Waterwell. She recently directed the world premiere of A Wrinkle in Time by Lauren Yee, music and lyrics by Heather Christian at Arena Stage. Notable credits include: Waterwell’s The Ford/Hill Project, which she co-created with Elizabeth Marvel (Woolly Mammoth, The Public Theater); Dance Nation by Clare Barron (Playwrights Horizons, Steppenwolf); Safety Not Guaranteed by Nick Blaemire with music and lyrics by Ryan Miller (BAM); Waterwell’s The Courtroom, created with Arian Moayed which premiered in a courtroom in the 2nd Circuit Thurgood Marshall Courthouse; Caught by Christopher Chen (PlayCo); Detroit Red by Will Power (ArtsEmerson); Sunday by Jack Thorne (Atlantic); In the Green by Grace McLean (LCT3); Miller, Mississippi by Boo Killebrew (Long Wharf, Dallas Theater Center); and Home by Geoff Sobelle (BAM Next Wave). She directed the film adaptation of The Courtroom which premiered at Tribeca Film Festival in 2022 and has had grassroots screenings around the country (www.thecourtroomfilm.com). As part of her work at Waterwell, she has partnered with the Council on Foreign Relations, the National Center for Youth Law, Labor Notes, the Dignity Not Detention Coalition and others to create original projects that make robust contributions to their work on public policy, communications, and organizing.

Waterwell creates theater, film, and digital media that wrestles with complex civic questions, gathering people for cultural events that provoke, inspire, and build community. We create productions that are artistically daring and emotionally potent to cultivate connections across real and perceived divides. We produce our projects using an evolving set of best practices that are influenced by the principles of community organizing and movement building. This is part of an investigation into how storytelling can have the most relevance and impact in efforts to create a more just and humane society. Our projects manifest in more than one medium but everything we do is infused with our love of the immediacy of live performance.

CREDITS

FUNDING + SUPPORT

The Ford/Hill Project was developed with support from The Axe-Houghton Foundation, The NYC Women’s Fund for Media, Music, and Theater by the City of New York Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment in association with The New York Foundation for the Arts. The project is made possible, in part, with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.

The first iteration of the project was presented by Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company and The Public Theater in October 2024.