Anthony Fauci made his acting debut at 85, performing as Tiresias in a reading of 'Oedipus the King' at Georgetown University. The event featured a cast including Jesse Eisenberg and aimed to draw parallels between the ancient play and contemporary issues like the climate crisis.
Key points
Anthony Fauci made his acting debut at age 85
He played Tiresias in Oedipus the King
The event featured Jesse Eisenberg and Chuck Schumer
It aimed to connect the play's themes to the climate crisis
The reading was organized by Theater of War
Mentioned in this story
Anthony FauciJesse EisenbergChuck SchumerTheater of WarGeorgetown University
Oedipus the King
When Anthony Fauci put on a pair of sunglasses, the hall erupted in cheers and applause. “Ah, how terrible it is to know when, in the end, knowing gains you nothing,” Fauci said. “I knew this once, but must have somehow forgotten, or else I never would have come.”
At the age of 85, the scientist, doctor and public servant who rose to prominence during the Covid-19 pandemic was making his debut as an actor. Fauci played Tiresias, the blind prophet (hence the sunglasses), in a dramatic reading of Sophocles’ Oedipus the King at Georgetown University in Washington on Tuesday night.
He was joined by a cast of professional actors led by Hollywood star Jesse Eisenberg as Oedipus, along with Chuck Schumer, the Democratic minority leader in the Senate, in a unique take on the Greek tragedy by Theater of War, a company that combines dramatic readings with town hall-style discussions at locations ranging from prisons to the Pentagon.
The company had come to make the case that a 2,500-year-old play about a mythical king of Thebes who inadvertently murders his father and marries his mother could teach Washington something about the climate crisis. After all, Oedipus the King is a tale of prophecy deniers, arrogant leaders, intergenerational curses and a city ravaged by pestilence and ecological collapse.
In an interview before the show, Fauci, a classics major (Greek and Latin) at the College of the Holy Cross, told the Guardian: “The point of something that was so potentially horrifying like realising that you killed your father, slept with your mother and fathered your own brothers and sisters is that he keeps going on and on, learning more and more about it, and he can’t believe it when it’s so obvious right in front of him.
“Then he brings in the messenger and shepherd and others and, by the time it’s realised that this is the truth, the only thing that happens is that the wife kills herself and he blinds himself and then winds up dying. When you see something that’s potentially as destructive as climate change, it’s right in front of you, you’re seeing it, and then there’s this constant denial about it. An unusual way to put that in the context of a Greek tragedy but it works.”
Asked to compare the play’s themes to the current political environment or health secretary , Fauci, a former chief medical adviser to Joe Biden, chuckled and politely declined. “I get in enough trouble,” he smiled, noting his preference to remain “under the radar” while continuing to teach medical residents and interns.
Q&A
What role did Anthony Fauci play in the Oedipus the King reading?
Anthony Fauci played Tiresias, the blind prophet, in the dramatic reading of 'Oedipus the King'.
Who were the other notable actors in the Oedipus the King reading?
Jesse Eisenberg played Oedipus, and Chuck Schumer, the Senate Democratic minority leader, also participated in the event.
What was the purpose of the Oedipus the King reading featuring Fauci?
The reading aimed to highlight themes of prophecy denial and leadership in relation to the climate crisis, drawing parallels to contemporary issues.
Where and when did Anthony Fauci's acting debut take place?
Fauci's acting debut took place at Georgetown University in Washington on a Tuesday night.
Eisenberg, star of films including The Social Network, Zombieland and Now You See Me, described the play as a timeless philosophical argument personified. “You have a guy here who is in denial of his own fate and is slowly coming to terms with it and so, for me as an actor, it creates wonderful dramatic stakes but intellectually it also is a fascinating discussion around denial and fate and, more specifically here, blind leadership.”
He said of Oedipus:“He won’t listen to reason, he ignores evidence and demonises anybody who tries to contradict what he assumes and what he thinks. What’s special about doing it with Dr Fauci, of course, is that it comes with all sorts of other resonance that can be quite allegorically potent.”
Cofounded in 2009 by Bryan Doerries and Phyllis Kaufman, Theater of War Productions has deployed ancient drama to confront myriad modern traumas. It performed Ajax for military veterans to discuss PTSD and suicide, The Suppliants for audiences discussing the plight of Ukrainian refugees and Antigone in Ferguson to address racialised police violence.
But on Tuesday, the focus was the survival of the entire planet. The Oedipus Project, originally developed during the global lockdown of the Covid-19 pandemic to discuss public health and isolated trauma, had been reframed for DC Climate Week.
Doerries, the company’s artistic director, said: “At the centre of this play is a fundamental question about whether it’s possible for us to wake up before it’s too late and make a change, not just for ourselves, but for generations to come. The play portrays the human capacity for denial as seemingly limitless and our worst quality as a species.”
He added: “We don’t do that to make people wallow fatalistically in the impossibility of making a change. The reason we perform Greek tragedies about people learning too late, in large part, is the same reason that it was done in the ancient world, not to send people home to wallow in their relative lack of agency but to wake them up to the fleeting and very narrow possibility of change before it’s too late.”
Fauci, who spent decades as a prophet of science warning US administrations about the realities of infectious diseases, was – to borrow a Trumpian phrase – straight from central casting for this particular metaphor.
Doerries commented: “We’re leaning into the meta-theatricality of that, the double valence. He’s playing Tiresias but he’s saying Tiresias’s lines with one foot planted in his world and one foot in the ancient archaic, classical past*.*
“One of the thrills of the scene is that he actually gets to tell Oedipus off and I never got to see Tony tell anybody off*.* The note I gave him during rehearsal was this may be the only moment in your professional career where you can actually tell the king off in the way that you’ve always wanted to*.”*
The 75-minute reading took place in the ornate surroundings of the university’s Gaston Hall, which boasts a decorated wood ceiling and classical allegorical scenes on its walls, before an audience of 700 students, academics, climate activists and policymakers, with more watching online.
Once the actors finished, they took their seats among the public and Doerries stepped forward to facilitate, posing questions to the room and the global Zoom audience: “In spite of the distance of culture and time, what spoke to you tonight as you listened to these intrepid performers and public servants reading the words of Sophocles? What touched you? What resonated with you? What was true?”
The responses were immediate, raw and reflective. Megan Blue, an undergraduate student studying environmental sustainability at Georgetown, drew a direct line between Oedipus’s treatment of Tiresias and the modern treatment of climate scientists.
She told the gathering: “I feel like that’s so reflective of what we’re seeing with climate denial and the way in which a lot of people are objecting and dissing experts and scientists and scientific fact because the reality of climate crisis is that we do need this fundamental shift in our ways of being and the values underlying our system.
Michaela Harrison, a Georgetown graduate, said the line that stood out to her was: “What is wrong with you wretched men?” There were whoops of agreement across the auditorium. She commented: “We have so many people in this time who are close to the powerful ones but are so afraid to tell the truth, are so afraid to stand on truth and trust in the power of truth telling.”
Joining via Zoom from New Orleans, Nathaniel Rich, a novelist and environmental academic, pointed out the citizens’ desperate need to find a scapegoat. While it is easy to blame oil and gas executives or denialist political parties, Rich said, climate change leaves everyone with a “sickening feeling” of complicity. “We can’t escape being part of the problem no matter how virtuous we are.”
One audience member in the balcony warned that the planet is hurtling towards the worst case scenario but humans have the power to stop it. He said: “I believe the answer is we speak truth and we listen to those who deny it. This last election, over half of the people that voted elected Donald Trump in the general vote. They have a perspective, they have a position and we must learn where they come from and we speak truth to them so they can listen to us.”
But Doerries kept a thread of hope running through the evening. The final word went to a freshman student who said: “I don’t think what happened to Oedipus was inevitable,” he said firmly. “We are Oedipus before the wretched end, before the fall from grace. Oedipus’ end of story is a potential bad ending and we’re not there yet. We have a chance to fight for a better ending, to listen to those who are speaking the truth.”
