{"id":545720,"date":"2026-04-23T02:24:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-23T02:24:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/545720\/"},"modified":"2026-04-23T02:24:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-23T02:24:08","slug":"actorly-fauci-becomes-blind-prophet-for-oedipus-the-king-reading-in-dc-anthony-fauci","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/545720\/","title":{"rendered":"Actorly Fauci becomes blind prophet for Oedipus the King reading in DC | Anthony Fauci"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Anthony Fauci<\/a> put on a pair of sunglasses, the hall erupted in cheers and applause. \u201cAh, how terrible it is to know when, in the end, knowing gains you nothing,\u201d Fauci said. \u201cI knew this once, but must have somehow forgotten, or else I never would have come.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u2019s Oedipus the King<\/a> at Georgetown University in Washington on Tuesday night.<\/p>\n

He was joined by a cast of professional actors led by the Hollywood star Jesse Eisenberg as Oedipus, along with Chuck Schumer<\/a>, 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.<\/p>\n

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<\/a>. After all, Oedipus the King is a tale of prophecy deniers, arrogant leaders, intergenerational curses and a city ravaged by pestilence and ecological collapse.<\/p>\n

In an interview before the show, Fauci, a classics major (Greek and Latin) at the College of the Holy Cross<\/a>, told the Guardian: \u201cThe 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\u2019t believe it when it\u2019s so obvious right in front of him.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen he brings in the messenger and shepherd and others and, by the time it\u2019s 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\u2019s potentially as destructive as climate change, it\u2019s right in front of you, you\u2019re seeing it, and then there\u2019s this constant denial about it. An unusual way to put that in the context of a Greek tragedy but it works.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked to compare the play\u2019s themes to the current political environment or the health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr<\/a>, Fauci, a former chief medical adviser to Joe Biden, chuckled and politely declined. \u201cI get in enough trouble,\u201d he smiled, noting his preference to remain \u201cunder the radar\u201d while continuing to teach medical residents and interns.<\/p>\n

Eisenberg, star of films including The Social Network<\/a>, Zombieland and Now You See Me, described the play as a timeless philosophical argument personified. \u201cYou 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said of Oedipus: \u201cHe won\u2019t listen to reason, he ignores evidence and demonises anybody who tries to contradict what he assumes and what he thinks. What\u2019s 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Co-founded in 2009 by Bryan Doerries and Phyllis Kaufman, Theater of War Productions<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

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<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Doerries, the company\u2019s artistic director<\/a>, said: \u201cAt the centre of this play is a fundamental question about whether it\u2019s possible for us to wake up before it\u2019s 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added: \u201cWe don\u2019t 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\u2019s too late.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fauci, who spent decades as a prophet of science warning US administrations about the realities of infectious diseases, was \u2013 to borrow a Trumpian phrase \u2013 straight from central casting for this particular metaphor.<\/p>\n

Doerries commented: \u201cWe\u2019re leaning into the meta-theatricality of that, the double valence. He\u2019s playing Tiresias but he\u2019s saying Tiresias\u2019s lines with one foot planted in his world and one foot in the ancient archaic, classical past.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne 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\u2019ve always wanted to.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 75-minute reading took place in the ornate surroundings of the university\u2019s Gaston Hall<\/a>, 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.<\/p>\n

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: \u201cIn 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?\u201d<\/p>\n

The responses were immediate, raw and reflective. Megan Lu, an undergraduate student studying environmental sustainability at Georgetown, drew a direct line between Oedipus\u2019s treatment of Tiresias and the modern treatment of climate scientists.<\/p>\n

She told the gathering: \u201cI feel like that\u2019s so reflective of what we\u2019re 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.<\/p>\n

Michaela Harrison, a Georgetown graduate, said the line that stood out to her was: \u201cWhat is wrong with you wretched men?\u201d There were whoops of agreement across the auditorium. She commented: \u201cWe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Joining via Zoom from New Orleans, Nathaniel Rich<\/a>, a novelist and environmental academic, pointed out the citizens\u2019 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 \u201csickening feeling\u201d of complicity. \u201cWe can\u2019t escape being part of the problem no matter how virtuous we are.\u201d<\/p>\n

One audience member in the balcony warned that the planet was hurtling towards the worst-case scenario but humans have the power to stop it. He said: \u201cI 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<\/a> 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Doerries kept a thread of hope running through the evening. The final word went to a freshman student who said: \u201cI don\u2019t think what happened to Oedipus was inevitable,\u201d he said firmly. \u201cWe are Oedipus before the wretched end, before the fall from grace. Oedipus\u2019s end of story is a potential bad ending and we\u2019re not there yet. We have a chance to fight for a better ending, to listen to those who are speaking the truth.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Anthony Fauci put on a pair of sunglasses, the hall erupted in cheers and applause. \u201cAh, how…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":545721,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6491,96,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-545720","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-celebrities","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=545720"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545720\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/545721"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=545720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=545720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=545720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}