Recipient of the Governor General’s Award for English Drama, Billy Bishop Goes to War is one of the most widely produced plays in Canadian theatre, documenting the heroic First World War exploits of Canadian flying ace Billy Bishop.
Written by Order of Canada recipient John Gray in collaboration with Eric Peterson, the play has been the recipient of multiple awards since it premiered in 1978 and is one of Canada’s most successful musical dramas of all time. Billy Bishop Goes to War continues to re‐create this true war‐time story for new generations of theatre audiences as it attempts to reconcile the horrors of battle with the ecstasy of flying, in the process capturing the complex but indomitable human spirit of its unlikely hero.
Billy Bishop Goes to War is a truly heart-warming, often funny, always captivating narrative of a genuine Canadian World War One flying ace. It is told through the eyes of Billy Bishop, who at the age of 21 left Owen Sound, Ontario to fight the Hun in the muddy war in Europe. While floundering in the mud with his cavalry horse, he saw a British pilot land lightly in a field and take off again — all clean, no mud — he immediately transferred to the Royal Air Force, where he was told the average lifespan of a pilot was 11 days. He signed up anyway and became one of only a handful of Canadian pilots in that war.
William Avery ‘Billy’ Bishop was officially credited with 72 victorious flying missions, making him the top Canadian ace in the First World War, and one of the few Canadian pilots to ever win the Victoria Cross for his daring early morning solo attack on a German Aerodrome in 1917.
The play stars actors Damon Calderwood and Chris Robson of Ace Productions, a British Columbia‐based, small‐cast touring musical theatre company.
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