The stage has always been a political setting, whether explicitly or implicitly. The lights go down, and confrontation and conflict ensues. With the U.S. presidential election around the corner, and the political fractures of society on full display, recent theater productions have grappled with these difficulties head-on. Here are a few of the current and upcoming productions tackling loaded and thorny issues.
‘The Ford/Hill Project’
That this verbatim play was staged at Woolly Mammoth Theater Company in Washington on Oct. 7, the first day of the Supreme Court’s new term, should make its political mission clear enough. As for the play itself? The actors onstage were re-enacting the accusations of sexual assault and harassment leveled at two Supreme Court justices, Clarence Thomas and Bret Kavanaugh.
“The Ford/Hill Project,” which begins performances on Wednesday at the Public Theater in Manhattan, interweaves real excerpts from the Senate hearings in which Anita Hill recounted her sexual harassment allegations against Thomas and, 30 years later, Christine Blasey Ford recounted hers against Kavanaugh. The replication of verbatim quotes allows the audience to attend these seismic political events themselves, draws attention to the very public nature of these proceedings and the theatricality of politics, and highlights the connection between our past and present.
In a recent video call, Lee Sunday Evans, the play’s director and co-creator, discussed how the performance breaks from being pure re-enactment. Hill and Ford “were extraordinarily alone when they gave their testimony,” she explained, but in the piece, “they’re able to stand side by side.” She added that she hopes the play helps people see their stories as more related and “creates a space where they don’t have to be alone.”
Elizabeth Marvel, who created the show with Evans and plays Ford, reflected on the effectiveness of a section of the show in which the men playing the two justices (Dylan Baker and Eric Berryman) swap roles with the women (Marvel and Amber Iman). “It’s such a fundamental exercise,” Marvel said, “for the general citizenry of Americans to engage in that sort of exercise of compassion and understanding and also to really embody the power and gender dynamics. You see it enacted in front of you as the art.”
Deep History
History is not told by one man. “Deep History,” though, is. David Finnigan wrote and performs this 70-minute show that endeavors to tell 75,000 years of happenings on Earth through the lens of what has led up to the climate disasters we face now.
“What I have experienced in my life in the last 20 years is that there isn’t really a space that we’ve made as a society to talk about this stuff,” he said in a video call. “Everyone is going through this thing, everyone is processing it.”
Finnigan is specifically concerned with what preceded the catastrophic brush fires that he and his loved ones faced in Australia during the 2019-20 fire season. He then leaps through a sprawling tale of human history, wondering how we got here — and where we go next.
When asked about his approach to writing about climate change while making it accessible to audiences, Finnigan said that he tries “to find a way to bring down and capture this sort of huge, enormous thing that we’re processing together into the room together with this group of people.”
Fatherland
Another show that uses transcripts, “Fatherland,” examines the relationship between Guy Wesley Reffitt, who was sent to prison for his role in the Jan. 6 riots, and his teenage son, Jackson, who turned his father in to the F.B.I. and testified against him. “Their clash, for all its 21st-century Americanness, is as primal as any parent-child conflict from ancient Greek drama, or from Shakespeare,” Laura Collins-Hughes wrote in her review for The New York Times. She added that the play makes the tale’s “inherent human messiness paramount — love and hate tangled up in loyalty and bravery.”
Blood of the Lamb
Instead of verisimilitude, this show aims to exaggerate cultural realities through satire. Directed by Margot Bordelon, it tells the story of Nessa, a pregnant woman who loses her baby but is forced to continue carrying her dead fetus after she lands in Texas, where a fictional new law has deemed the fetus a Texas citizen and appoints a lawyer to represent its interests. Collins-Hughes described this show, along with “Fatherland,” as being “about the grief and anger, the fear and disorientation, of no longer recognizing your own country.”
Guac
Manuel Oliver wrote and performs this show in honor of his son, Joaquin, who was killed in the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. In an interview with The Times last year, Oliver discussed why he turned to theater after his work as an activist. “When you’re working in these areas of activism and looking for justice, you do have the chance to go to rallies and talk to people and they give you five to 10 minutes,” he said, adding: “So I thought what if I have a full 100 percent attention for an hour about Joaquin’s life? How do I make that happen?”
We Live in Cairo
This musical theater exploration of the Arab Spring, with book, music and lyrics by the brothers Daniel and Patrick Lazour, follows six activists who use music as rebellion. (It had a run in 2019 at American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Mass.) Here, art as activism is the form and the content.
In the Amazon Warehouse Parking Lot
Sarah Mantell’s speculative look at the not-so-distant future follows queer warehouse workers who are trying to survive and build community as the oceans rise and the coastlines creep ever closer. Mantell received the 2023 Susan Smith Blackburn Award for this play, which will be directed by Sivan Battat (“Problems Between Sisters”).
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