A girl is dying. A priest wants to see her. Her doctor refuses. Who is right?
Robert Icke’s acclaimed The Doctor turns one medical decision into a riveting debate about ethics, religion, race, identity and power. Join us for a staged reading followed by an audience conversation as part of Ethics in the Theater.
In Robert Icke’s gripping The Doctor, a brilliant physician refuses to allow a Catholic priest into the room of a dying teenage girl. What begins as a medical decision ignites a fierce public controversy over religion, race, identity, medical ethics and the limits of personal conviction. Adapted from Arthur Schnitzler’s Professor Bernhardi, Icke’s acclaimed play has been praised by The Guardian for the “exemplary fairness” of its arguments. Provocative, intelligent and startlingly relevant, The Doctor asks: When deeply held values collide, who gets to decide what is right?
The staged reading will be followed by a conversation with the audience as part of the Ethics in the Theater series.
About the play
In Robert Icke’s provocative and gripping The Doctor, Professor Ruth Wolff, a brilliant physician and committed atheist, refuses to allow a Catholic priest into the room of a dying teenage girl. What begins as a medical decision explodes into a public controversy involving religion, race, antisemitism, gender, identity, institutional politics, and the power of social media. Adapted from Arthur Schnitzler’s 1912 Professor Bernhardi, Icke’s acclaimed contemporary reimagining asks a deceptively simple question: When deeply held values collide, who gets to decide what is right?
The Doctor refuses to provide easy answers—or easy villains. The Guardian praised Icke’s “brilliant expansion” of Schnitzler’s original and the “exemplary fairness” with which the play confronts competing ethical claims, while The Observer called it a “masterstroke” distinguished by its “twisting, needling argument.” Critics have described the work as a “dazzling tour de force” and “theatre at its finest.” At a moment when questions of medical authority, religious conviction, identity, bias and public judgment remain intensely contested, The Doctor offers exactly what great theater can: not a lecture on what to think, but an invitation to question what we think we know—and why.
A girl is dying. A priest wants to see her. Her doctor refuses. Who is right?
HerStoriesTold Mission
HerStoriesTold is a Florida-based nonprofit committed to amplifying the voices of women through theater and film. We believe storytelling is a catalyst for empathy and meaningful dialogue. By bringing women’s stories—and other underrepresented voices—to the stage and screen, we seek to revive the art of civil discourse, challenge assumptions, and create space for conversations that connect rather than divide.