SAY WHAT?

Terrence McNally does a wonderful job convincing us that we should avoid ghettoizing someone into being a “gay playwright” or a “gay actor” (“Gay Theater? No, Just Life,” Dec. 8). We need to appreciate their value as artists.

Yet, for some odd reason, McNally then destroys the power of his own argument by trying to prove Shakespeare and his Hamlet character were secretly gay.

There is no factual basis for thinking Shakespeare was gay, nor do any of his plays suggest a gay background. Maybe he lived in a time when you couldn’t talk about such things. Not so. Elizabethan theater was as out there as our own time--rape, incest, you name it, you could find it being shown.

Nor does McNally offer any textual evidence of Hamlet’s homosexuality. McNally thinks Hamlet is gay because Hamlet is angry with his mother and girlfriend. Is that all? Oh, and Hamlet likes theater. Well, that proves it.

Why is McNally trying to ghettoize Hamlet? Because he can identify with Hamlet’s experience. Fair enough. Yet “Hamlet” resonates with everyone--straight and gay, male and female.

“Hamlet” isn’t about being gay or being white or being male, it’s about what unites us as people.

TIM TRUBY

Los Angeles

*

While I think Terrence McNally’s plays are wonderful, I and a lot of people across the country would be surprised to learn that gay theater does not exist anymore.

The Purple Circuit networking organization is composed of individuals and producing groups from Los Angeles to Durham, N.C., and everywhere in between that promote and produce gay theater. In some areas they are the community center, the cultural center for self- and not-so-sure-identified gay and lesbian people who need to be represented onstage in a safe and secure environment from homo-hatred that can exist in many mainstream theaters, even ones that do some gay-themed work, as well as in acting schools.

Gay culture has existed for thousands of years and in these repressive times there is a great need for it to continue to exist and prosper.

BILL KAISER

Los Angeles

*

We great unwashed, also known as heterosexists, find gay theater is a bore because it doesn’t know anything about what we find to be most interesting--male/female relationships.

I have no interest in what any gay male (including Tennessee Williams) has to say about normal male/female relationships. Clearly, McNally doesn’t know what interests anyone who isn’t like him.

RAY D. DENTON

Hinsdale, Ill.

*

Hamlet gay? Better clear some asbestos-lined space on your Letters page. I’m sure Charlton Heston will have something to say about this!

BOB CANNING

Burbank