A groundbreaking play based on a lost BBC radio documentary on male homosexuality that was developed at the University of Salford is set to go on a national tour next year.
Stephen M Hornby, a Teaching Fellow in Drama and Theatre Practice at the University of Salford, is planning to take his play, The BBC’s First Homosexual, on tour after its successful launch at the New Adelphi Theatre in late 2022.
The play was initially commissioned as part of the BBC 100 celebrations in 2022, with Stephen, the national playwright in residence for LGBT+ History Month, given the newly discovered transcript from the original documentary in 1953.
The documentary was the BBC’s first ever broadcast on the subject of male homosexuality, which was illegal in the UK at the time, and was broadcast in 1957 after being shelved for three years.
Stephen’s play, produced by his own production company, Inkbrew Productions, took the original interviews featured in the documentary and developed them for the stage, alongside a narrative that follows producers behind-the-scenes at the BBC discussing the content and its release as well as introducing a fictional character who is exploring his sexuality and comes to listen to the documentary when it’s broadcast.
After two sold out shows, Stephen is working with his partner on the project, Dr Marcus Collins, A Reader in Contemporary History at Loughborough University, to take the show on the road.
Backed by funding from the University’s EDI In Research Fund and further funding from Loughborough, the duo are identifying venues for a tour beginning in February 2025, LGBT+ History Month.
Stephen, an award-winning playwright, said:
“Nothing gives me a greater thrill than restoring lost history. We know that the BBC had a period in its past when it destroyed some of own archive. It means we’ve lost some key works from this time. In my mind, this play is a way of bringing that back, bringing it to life and marking the impact that it made socially at the time. And the BBC’s been very supportive now of honestly exploring this legacy in a sensitive and creative way.
“It’s hard for a modern audience to understand perhaps that the BBC, at the time, was the voice of the nation, its social conscious, with between 10 to 20 million people tuning in to listen to one thing and that would have had a massive cultural impact, dominating the national conversation.
“The documentary itself is a load of offensive nonsense which states that conversion therapy can work. There is a degree that this pernicious untruth has been imbedded into our national consciousness and we want to address that as part of this tour.
“At every performance, we want to hold community forums to talk about how people have responded to the topic and develop the discussion around the UK Government banning conversion therapy and how this will be implemented and policed.”
The touring performances will be a longer one-hour version than the initial 35-minute performance from 2022 but will remain true to the original narrative set out in the script.
Stephen and Marcus plan to work with original play director Oliver Hurst, artistic director of Manchester-based Redbrick Theatre and Salford alumni, who received the inaugural Hodgkiss Director Award earlier this summer, on the touring version.
The duo are applying for further funding to the Arts Council of England to run the initial tour and also to the Arts and Humanities Research Council with the aim of doing a longer tour that would commence later on in 2025 and finish by February 2026.
