On 30 November 1993, the Aids activist Larry Kramer and Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, were arguing again. They argued a lot back then about the US government’s response, or lack thereof, to the Aids crisis. Fauci asserted institutional legitimacy. Kramer scolded that any institution presiding over a genocide doesn’t have any. Kramer wanted to untie Fauci’s hands from politics and bureaucracy; Fauci wanted to de-escalate Kramer’s vituperous hand-wringing. They also ribbed each other, allies as often as antagonists.
On the night they appeared on C-Span, the buttoned-up not-for-profit cable channel better known for unfettered congressional coverage than for the verbal pyrotechnics of CNN’s Crossfire, or the revelations-as-entertainment approach to politics by Oprah and Donahue. But this night was different. Journalist Steve Scully spent the hour trying to moderate Kramer and Fauci as they attacked and amused each other: he redirected them back to his questions when passions erupted, and kept those questions to centrist concerns of, mostly, money. And in between all this he took he took calls from civilians whose empathy and expertise in Aids, let’s say, ranged wildly. It was an exhausting hour, which settled little. But it showed what just might happen when people yell at each other loudly enough so they can be heard, and also listen.
Kramer/Fauci, which this fall expands from a run at the NYU Skirball Center for the Performing Arts into a takeover of the cavernous St Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn, re-stages this night under the direction of Daniel Fish, whose Tony-nominated reimagining of the musical Oklahoma!, produced in the round with servings of chili and cornbread, also began at St Ann’s. While the text of Kramer/Fauci draws entirely from the C-Span transcript, its delivery – by Thomas Jay Ryan as Kramer, Will Brill as Fauci, Greig Sargeant as Scully and Jennifer Seastone as everyone else – takes flight into poetics. “When I first saw the interview, I was really moved by it, and entertained and compelled,” Fish says, speaking on Zoom from rehearsals at St Ann’s as a nor’easter whipped the windows.
“I knew I didn’t want to make a literal docu-theatre version of it, where people were sitting at a table. I always knew it would be theatricalized.” And indeed it is, with props and costumes that often start off funny and end up haunting and surreal. The theatrical ambitions succeed in large part because its namesake pair knew their ambitions were theatrical, too.
“I moved to New York in the summer of 1984, in this history of [Aids],” says Ryan. “Larry’s activism was scary to me. He was asking me to face things that I, very young, didn’t want to look at. By 1993, I really remember believing there would never be an answer, that Aids was going to get worse and worse until I died. By that point, Larry’s hyperbole seemed to match the moment exactly.” When we speak, Ryan offers up this hyperbole with a riotous flamboyance anchored in a deep understanding that Kramer, author of the incendiary pre-Aids novel Faggots and The Normal Heart, a definitive play about the early days of the plague, was first and foremost a writer. “In this interview, he knows he has limited time to make the points,” he says. “He has such structure and wit and build. He’s in control of the rhetoric, in his silences and fury.”
Fauci demonstrates remarkable control, too. “One of the great strengths that Tony has is an opacity that is very carefully constructed, and captivating,” says Brill. “I’m very moved by his implacability, with the way he is able to receive Larry’s vociferousness with such elegant poise.” Brill had developed his take on Fauci – his rat-a-tat data dumps, his languorous delight in the spotlight – before Fauci returned to the public square this summer, bearing (and baiting) rightwing conspiracy theories around his handling of Covid. “I saw Tony sort of refusing to meet Rand Paul on his level, which I was happy about,” Brill says, “but I also saw somebody who was really war-weary.”
On C-Span, Fauci is still bullish. “I’m really fascinated by the moments in which he takes on callers who have pseudo-scientific takes on what is happening,” Brill says. “He’s very quick to put them in their place.” He’s also figuring out his own place in the movement, how to amass power and credibility from the opposing side. “Larry asks why we’re not calling Aids a plague. Tony never says: well, because plague is a literary, not a scientific word,” Ryan notes. “He never calls that out. It’s a fascinating chess move.”
Fauci attended the opening night at Skirball this February. “There’s a story he told us, about a similar public conversation they had,” Fish says. “It was very heated. He felt clobbered by Kramer, feeling like it was awful. He walked in the door [after the show], the phone rang, and it was Larry saying, ‘Weren’t we terrific!’”
Today, this joy in altercations is everywhere, from the gotcha factory of the YouTube show Jubilee (sample video title: 1 Conservative vs 20 Liberals) to Trump’s heckling style of leadership. But Kramer/Fauci reminds us that, while arguing can be entertaining, it’s better as a call to action.
At one point, a woman phones in to talk of her sister, who’s dying of Aids-related complications. “I’m always struck by Kramer’s response to this,” Fish says. “Which is: how could you not be moved?” On stage, Ryan offers the words as both question and demand. “It’s simultaneously the voice of the poet, the humanist and the activist,” Fish says. You can sense the words becoming fuel for Fauci, too. “Despite the polarization, you have two people who are actually listening to each other. That’s sadly extraordinary, right?”
