Homosexuality and American Theatre: A Psychoanalytic Comment

Abstract

“In dreams begins responsibility.”—W. B. Yeats“The whole concept is thrilling, the realization of a dream. In the few days that we have been working together I have had more fun than I have had in years.”—Elia Kazan (on the Lincoln Center Repertory)Among the wrongs which the current theatre is said to sustain to its detriment, homosexuality is included with an increasing alarm, if not in print so much, then in conversation. If one believes what one hears, then homosexuality inflicts no mere indisposition on the general theatrical enterprise, but rather a grave disability. Homosexuals—the indictment goes—have exploited the theatre's traditionally liberal hospitality toward deviant and errant souls and have become numerous, widespread, and powerful; they discriminate in favor of their own kind, invariably betraying artistic considerations for sexual and social advantages. But most lamentable—the indictment continues—is the fact that even when the homosexual resolves to renounce immediate personal gratifications in the service of theatre itself, his good intentions (unlike yours and mine) go awry; for there is something in the nature of homosexuality itself, some vague though actual corruption of spirit and vision, which imposes certain inevitable limitations on the expressiveness of the homosexual performer, writer, director, or whatever.