Title: Billy Bishop Goes To War
Brief Synopsis: Billy Bishop Goes To War
(What Can I Say, the play delivers what it promises)
Author: John Gray (Based in: Vancouver; other plays by:
Rock and Roll,
18 Wheels,
Don Messer’s Jubilee; What he didn’t write: "Men are From Mars Women are From Venus")
Production History: Premiered in the Fall, 1978; later produced everywhere, all the freakin’ time.
I have to admit that somehow I’ve never seen a production of this play and, until now, had never read it. And as a Canadian playwright, that's a feat that's a little harder than you'd think, so mea culpa.
Billy Bishop, like all history plays in my opinion, is about right now. That's key. History plays that are actually about the past aren't that interesting. Good historical dramas use the lens of history to understand the present. Right Now. And the right now in this case is 1978, when the play was written. In 1978 Canada was working really hard on understanding herself. Identity was a big concern and so this work reflects that in presenting a story that tells an important part of our national mythology: the story of Canada's coming of age in World War I. This story of Canada growing up in the context of its participation of the Great War is so familiar that you'd almost think it was true. But this part of our national story only came about many years after the fact. Canadians at the time didn't consider the War as a rite of passage or think afterwards that we had arrived at sort of national adulthood and could now cut the apron strings with England. But in the 70s that was a popular reading of the War. And this play echoes that mythology with a coming of age story of a young Canadian soldier who starts off as an unfocused, uncouth, and undisciplined kid from Owen Sound and in the course of the war discovers who he is and gains some much needed maturity, responsibility and most importantly self-awareness and identity.
But what's interesting and particularly compelling about the story is that it manages to neither glorify the war, nor provide the other equally simplified take with a character that realizes that War is Hell and pointless and that soldiers are just pawns and the whole thing is meaningless. Which would have been, post-Vietnam, a totally reasonable path for the play to take. But Gray lets it be a little more complicated. Bishop at the end of the play is certainly less naive, less romantic, and more world weary. But he also acknowledges that the War was one of the best times of his life. Horrible things happened, he lost friends, he killed all sorts of people, saw all sorts of tragedy... and he also had experiences that he wouldn't trade for the world. His last line: "It was a hell of a time!"
That moral complexity is maybe also a product of the 70s too.
Though the play is of its times, it certainly stands up as great script even 30 years later. Partly because it is a masterpiece of economical theatricality. It’s written to be performed by two players, an actor who plays Billy and every other character in the story, and the piano player who accompanies the actor on the many songs in the play and occasionally sings backup with him as well.
And what I most love about this piece is that it makes no apologies for being theatre. Two guys, a piano, a few hand props (essentially toys used to illustrate scene like a kid would when playing), and a lot of direct address. It’s a ton of great storytelling with all the elements of theatre: actors playing characters, using props, wearing costumes, there’s even music and lyric, and all the potential in the world for creative staging in the hands of a smart director and talented design team.
I love that it’s Billy Bishop standing there talking to us, but there’s no overarching frame or device (like he’s talking to his grandchild or writing a letter or some other stupid thing to explain his presence in front of us). If anyone ever asked John Gray, “Yes, but WHO exactly is he talking to?” the answer might have been… “the damn audience who paid to come and see this play.”
“But the real Billy Bishop never met this audience, so how can the actor
play that?”
"Um... It's just theatre?"
And this is a lesson to be taken from the play: you don’t have to always create a piece that lives in the bubble of its own world. It's a good reminder that we don’t have to attempt the verisimilitude of film which is a type of theatre practice we’ve been doing for a very long time now and it’s often abysmally boring. And we don't have to always follow the rules of good dramaturgy.
Presented with Billy Bishop and his habit of telling us stories from the war from the vantage point of sometime after the fact, a dramaturge might say, “you know, it would be more ACTIVE if he’s making the discoveries in the moment. The STAKES would be HIGHER if he doesn’t know what’s going to happen next.”
So the writer might then work their butt off changing the tense of the monologue, eliminating all those fun little ironic asides he has were he comments from outside the story on events that added a bit of humor to the tale, and you try to invent some reason why he would be speaking aloud during this event happening in real time, so you contrive some device like he’s radioing his observations in from the plane, or there’s another person in the cockpit who he’s talking to, or he has a habit of constructing letters home in his mind as he flies, or some stupid thing. And the story/monologue that was energetic, fun, and full of suspense, is now forced, convoluted, and unbelievable. All in the attempt to make it real and active. Because it’s passive to tell a story in the past tense. Right? No. Wrong.
Because the present tense is always there in the theatre performance. The audience is the present tense, and they’re the ones who are experiencing this for the first time. The stakes are in building and conveying a story that drives them to the edge of their seat. That’s the action the actor plays: Drive them to the edge of their seats. We do it all the time. We tell stories we know the end of in order to captivate our listeners. And the stakes can be huge.
Unapologetic theatre. Don't be afraid to embrace the form you're working in.
Up Next: John Murrell's 1977 World War II Drama, "Waiting for the Parade"
