Billy Bishop Goes to War

billy bishop goes to war john gray with eric peterson artist note: Eric Peterson For over forty years, John Gray and I have had Billy Bishop Goes to War between us, as part of our lives and our friendship, and it’s this friendship that is at the heart of the joy I feel in doing the play again. It’s what also keeps the piece ‘a work in progress’, as we two old chums try to figure out what this play we created so long ago means to us today, a process we’ve been lucky to repeat every ten years or so. We first played it through our thirties, then in our early fifties, and now in our early sixties.

The play still remains the journey of a fictional, ‘real’ Canadian war hero, a kind of ‘every Canadian’ and his story of survival, with its theme of how surviving such great difficulties reshapes our self-awareness as individuals and as a country. What changes every time we come back to the play is how it is cast, with the parts being played by actors who are getting steadily older, oddly enough. The casting of a play unleashes a fate that the production is destined to fulfill. It’s not the only factor but it’s certainly a major one and Billy Bishop Goes to War is no exception. Those early productions, when John and I were thirty year-olds, spoke of youth coming to manhood, and I got to act ‘age’ at the end of the play when Air Vice Marshal Bishop was an ancient fifty-seven. In our fifties, the fifty-seven year old Bishop was the bracket within which the play was told with all the modulations of an older man looking back on his past prime.

Now John and I are the same age the real Billy Bishop was when he passed away quietly in his sleep at the age of sixty-two, and so, it is a Bishop looking back on his life from the end of his life that informs this Soulpepper production. It has been a huge creative pleasure working on Billy Bishop Goes to War again and with the wonderful contributions of Ted, Camie and Lorenzo, I don’t think John and I have ever had more fun performing it.

Eric Peterson, Billy Bishop in Billy Bishop Goes to War

photo: cylla von tiedemann

billy Bishop goes to war john gray with eric peterson

canada 1978

eric peterson

production

cast

Ted Dykstra director & sound designer

Eric Peterson billy bishop and others

Camellia Koo set & costume designer

John Gray pianist and narrator

Lorenzo Savoini Lighting designer Marinda de Beer stage manager Ashlyn Ireland assistant stage manager

production sponsor

Originally produced by the Vancouver East Cultural Centre, Vancouver B.C. 1978.

There will be one 20-minute intermission. Approximate running time 2 hours.

background notes Billy Bishop Goes On Stage John Gray and Eric Peterson met in 1969 at the University of BC, formed a company that became Tamahnous Theatre, worked with Theatre Passe Muraille in the 1970s, and have been the best of friends ever since.

In 1976, having acquired an interest in Canadian heroes, Peterson gave Gray a copy of Winged Warfare, Billy Bishop’s account of his first tour of duty with the Royal Air Force during World War I, in which he describes his first 48 (of 72) kills. The most decorated Canadian of the war with the Victoria Cross, the Distinguished Service Order and the Military Cross, Bishop had been all but lost to an antiwar generation – a pity, because his story said a lot about Canada, then and now.

Theatre Passe Muraille provided some money for research and development, and the play opened at the Vancouver East Cultural Centre shortly before Remembrance Day, 1978.

Billy Bishop Sees the World Peterson and Gray embarked on a 16-month tour in theatres across Canada, including an extended run at Passe Muraille. Along the way, the show caught the eye of Lewis Allen, who had recently produced Annie. Allen called his partner Mike Nichols, who arrived in Listowel, Ontario during a blizzard, saw the show in a converted railway station, and decided it should go to Broadway.

Following a tryout at Arena Stage in Washington, Billy Bishop Goes to War opened at the Morosco Theatre, the second Canadian show to reach Broadway after the ill-fated Rockabye Hamlet in 1976. It received warm reviews and positive word of mouth, and lasted four months in New York.

The production later toured to the Edinburgh Festival, London’s West End, the Arena Stage in Los Angeles, was produced for television in Britain, Canada and Germany, and was awarded the 1982 Governor General’s Award for drama. For four years in the early 1980s it was the most produced show in America.

Billy Bishop Goes to Pot In 1998, Peterson and Gray updated the play to fit their age. Bishop would now be an old war hero, recalling his experiences prior to recruiting troops in World War II. About the revised version, Peterson reflects, “Before, when Billy sang about survival, I always took it as a romantic thing, to do with the war. But now I see the musical as a metaphor for life. We’re all trying to survive, and we all pay a price for it.” Gray adds, “The older you get the more you realize that just surviving takes courage too.”

Billy Bishop Goes to War remains one of the most produced Canadian plays of all time, both at home and abroad.

Background Notes by Associate Artist Paula Wing.

soulpepper production Jacqueline Robertson-Cull

Natalie Swiercz

Phil Atfield

Daniela Mazic

dresser

cutter

scenic painter

Christina Hantos

Andrzej Tarasiuk

Greg Chambers

Steve Hudak

scenic sewer

assistant scenic sewer

props builder

painter

head of hair & makeup

soulpepper thanks: Mar-Lyn Lumber Sales Ltd., PRG Toronto, JD International, Dual Audio Services, Gerriets International, Lowrey’s Piano Experts.

Soulpepper Theatre Company is an active member of the Professional Association of Canadian Theatres (pact), the Toronto Alliance for the Performing Arts (tapa) and Theatre Ontario, and engages, under the terms of the Canadian Theatre Agreement, professional artists who are members of Canadian Actors’ Equity Association.

YOUNG CENTRE FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS DISTILLERY HISTORIC DISTRICT