Also there is nothing to prevent the loved one being a male partner and homoerotic readings of Beckett’s work are not uncommon. As regards Reader, Gontarski himself has argued that what we are seeing is effectively a dramatisation of "the elemental creative process... suggested in "That Time", where the protagonist of narrative A would hide as a youth, 'making up talk breaking up two or more talking to himself being together that way'." Others suggest that Reader is the "shade", some kind of spectral emissary, despatched by Listener’s dead lover to help him through the grieving process. In an early draft of the play Beckett had focussed "on a ghost returning from the Underworld to speak at... a conference"; the only vestige of that remaining is the pun on "White nights" - Whitenights, Reading is where a great many of his manuscripts are now preserved and the address of the Beckett International Foundation. "The narrative echoes (but does not replicate or anticipate) the stag(ed) image." "In the text we are told that the figures remain: 'Buried in who knows what profounds of mind'. On stage, however, they raise their heads to meet each other’s eyes in meaningful contemplation." It is therefore equally plausible that the two men on stage are not the same as the two men in the story. "Like an author, Listener occasionally calls for the repeat of a phrase, but Reader has his own agency, repeating a phrase unbidden at least once." One factor that suggests this might "not" be the case is the fact that there is only one hat between the two of them. After the story has been read and the book closed Listener knocks once more, the signal to begin again from where Reader had left off. "What do words say when there is nothing left to tell" however? Beckett was obsessed by a desire to create what he called a "literature of the unword", and the play represents another example of this effort. In Charles Sturridge's 2002 film adaptation of "Ohio Impromptu" for the Beckett on Film project, modern cinematic techniques allowed Reader and Listener to both be played by the same actor (Jeremy Irons), literally fulfilling Beckett's instruction that the two characters should be "as alike in appearance as possible" and following the interpretation that they are really elements in the one personality. In the text, the pair only look directly at each other at the very end.