Staged Letters   

"Lynch law will prevail, and blood will be shed."

"If you want to do something about drinking, close down the University of Florida."

"That rich boy in the governor's office doesn't have to worry about how to pay for his dental care."

Lines like these leapt off the pages of the Gainesville Sun and onto the stages of community theaters in Florida this winter and spring. A Gainesville theater company played "More Letters to the Editor," which was mostly written by the city's newspaper readers during the past 150 years, to nearly packed houses in the city and surrounding Alachua County.

Gainesville's Acrosstown Repertory Theatre's amateur actors portrayed city residents during decades when Florida voting controversies weren't about dimpled chad, but centered on the rights of newly freed slaves and, later, on the question of women's suffrage. On a set plastered with old copies of the Gainesville Sun, the play featured missives on war, Yankees, traffic, segregation, gun control, Hooters, tourism and other topics hot enough to provoke Floridians to air their views in print.

The idea for the play was conceived when a Gainesville arts patron read about a similar production in Pennsylvania and persuaded Acrosstown to create a local version. The Gainesville Sun paid a researcher to cull the most interesting and historically significant letters to the Sun and other Gainesville papers like the Independent Florida Alligator and the now-defunct Daily Bee.

"It was great publicity for the paper," says Sun Editorial Page Editor Ron Cunningham. The paper ran free ads for the play, which coincided with the Sun's 125th anniversary.

The play's coauthors, University of Florida English professor Sid Homan and actor-director Bill Eyerly, made the final selection of letters and wove them into a series of skits. Each performance featured a Gainesville personality reading a letter. Cunningham and Gainesville Sun editorial cartoonist Jake Fuller each took a turn on stage.

Homan is now writing a book to show other theater companies and newspapers how to mount a "Letters to the Editor" production in their own towns.

"It's a great way to connect with your readers," Cunningham says.