Step back to 1962 Australia when homosexuality was still illegal; a scandal at a university is set to explode. It has been uncovered that a junior lecturer is engaged in a relationship with a student, only that’s not the problem – it is that they are both men. The story unfolds in The Will To Be at The Q- Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre on 13-14 June.

The solo show written by Mark Salvestro, which premiered at the Melbourne Fringe Festival in 2019, has gone on to win awards and please audiences around the country. The work is an expose of society, love, tragedy and history woven with the beautiful prose of Shakespeare.

On the stage, the audience meets William O’Hallaran, who has just found out that he has been dismissed from his position as a junior lecturer.

“William is coming to terms with what that means in terms of his life, purpose and what to do next. It is set in real time and over the next 60 minutes, he confides in the audience how he got into this situation, reflects on his discovery of his sexuality and who he is going to be moving forward,” says Mr Salvestro.

While it may be frowned upon now, in the 1960s it wasn’t uncommon for a lecturer to date their students. The issue for William is the gender of the student he was attracted to.

“These men are actually quite close in age, as a junior lecturer and senior student they’re probably around 24 and 28 years old but they did happen to meet within the university context.”

William has been tasked with coaching Henry in his upcoming role of Romeo in the student production of Romeo and Juliet. During a time when society shamed and convicted queer people, a place like a university was sometimes a refuge, explains Mr Salvestro.

“Universities were sometimes the only places where people could meet through these like-minded interests and find ways to connect … It is kind of sad that it was the only place that he could let down his guard and meet this man he had so much in common with.”

The show is not based on one particular incident, but more on a collective history that Mr Salvestro came across while researching. A big inspiration was the murder of Dr George Duncan, a gay man and law lecturer at the University of Adelaide who was drowned in the River Torrens on 10 May 1972 because of his sexuality.

“I used that whole university world and educator world and merged it with these relationships and what that might look like if we put it 10 years earlier than when that happened.”

A deep lover of Shakespeare, the ways it can be told and finding ways to weave vignettes of the prose in with contemporary language, Mr Salvestro wanted to blend Shakespeare into the performance.

“If it is really grounded in performance, often as the listener you don’t realise it has switched to Shakespeare until halfway through.”

Coming out isn’t a one-and-done, there are layers to coming out, explains Mr Salvestro. And although he was already out, he wasn’t strong on his queer history. Knowing he would be working on a play with Shakespearean influence, he wanted to marry his history research and reconnect with his own queer identity through the power of Shakespeare.

“I thought who would be able to realistically quote Shakespeare off the cuff within that context – it’s an actor, director, an educator, a writer.”

Deciding on an educator, a time frame and the histories and comedies of Shakespeare, all the pieces came together. The Will To Be looks back on queer history and shows us how far we have come, if the same situation was to happen today – the issue would be on the power dynamics of the relationship rather than the genders of those involved. Mr Salvestro hopes that young queer people in particular take the time to learn their history.

“It is not about making them feel bad or down or anything like that it is coming back to gratitude and awareness for the people that came before them. The struggles and sacrifices that came before so can have the lives that we have now.”

More than anything else though, the creator and performer hopes that the audience will take home with them the fact that often there is a light in the darkness.

“I want the audience to maintain a sense of hope and inspiration if things are not working in their favour, sometimes it can be the spark of something beautiful and put them on the path of something really exciting,” he smiles.

See history unfold in The Will To Be at The Q- Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre on 13-14 June; theq.net.au

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