DANIEL FISH
Kramer/Fauci
Word for word, Daniel Fish recreates the explosive 1993 C-SPAN clash between AIDS activist Larry Kramer and Dr Anthony Fauci — a fight that became a friendship.
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Tony-nominated director Daniel Fish restages a 1993 television programme in which playwright and HIV/AIDS activist Larry Kramer and infectious disease expert Dr Anthony Fauci confronted each other live on air. What started divisive became, over years, a deep friendship — and Fish’s word-for-word restaging crystallises a genuine turning point in the fight for AIDS care, treatment and recognition. Fish dramatizes the exchange as both history and provocation, a searing reminder of how art, activism, and public health collide on the most human terms.
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SPACES AND VIBES
proscenium theatre, works as a festival piece or within subscription seasons.THE DATA
NYU Skirball Center, New York, return season St Ann’s Warehouse, NYC. Daniel Fish’s previous work Oklahoma! played Broadway NYC and West End, London
“God, I hated him … As far as I was concerned, he was the central focus of evil in the world.” —Larry Kramer on Anthony Fauci, in The New Yorker (2002)
“He attacked me, he called me a murderer, he called me an incompetent idiot, I mean publicly … It turned out I loved the guy, and I think he loved me back.” —Anthony Fauci on Larry Kramer, PBS (2020)
“Oh, to return to the relatively sedate, normal politics of the 1990s, when America was on a victory lap following the fall of the Soviet Union and most debates were between the center left and center right—over tax policy. As an elder millennial, I have often been seduced by the delusion expressed in the previous sentence. So, I’m glad there are artists in the theater like Daniel Fish, eager to review the evidence and disabuse me.” — Theater Mania
