"You have a green heart my child" and I'd say "How green?" She'd say "Oh the greenest" and I'd say "Why?" 

After he'd gone, I knew what she meant.

She didn't mean mine at all

and that's what I'm going to tell you.

I'm going to tell you how green her heart was.

 

 

 

Billy Fisher is a new commision based on the story of a Midland soldier sent to World War II and reported as 'missing presumed dead'. He was not dead, as his wife and son believed, but detained as a Prisoner of War in the Alten Grabow camp in Germany. This is the fictionalised story of the camp, and the group of men detained in it, and the women back home, all doing what they can to survive, the men waiting, thinking, knitting; the women, trading, arming, coping. 

 

 

 

The Billy Fisher Project

 

Left: Second workshop cast read through the latest draft   Right: Charlie Sanderson and Elinor d'Angelis

Left: Gillian Twaite                                       Right: Charlotte Sanderson

Left: Daniel Handscomb as Billy Fisher                 Right: Elinor d'Angelis as Mary Fisher

Left: Jan Knightley as Russian POW Konstantin       Right: Jan Knightley & Dan Handscomb

 

Image: The extant photograph of the real Mary and young Billy Fisher, and the basis for an also extant painting of Mary and Billy, by an unknown Russian POW in Alten Grabow

 

For more images - click on the portrait of Mary and Billy 

They'll take you to the Untamed Shrew Productions Theatre Company facebook page 

 

Billy Fisher is a collaboration between writer Victoria Grainger and Director Jaq Bessell and is in development with the actors involved. It has received two workshops with the cast. Preview dates are being scheduled for later this year at The Shakespeare Institute in Stratford-Upon-Avon, and will be one of the plays in Stratford this autumn/winter.

 

Untamed Shrew wishes to thank it's associate artists who have been and continue to be involved with the Billy Fisher project: Charlotte Sanderson, Daniel Handscomb, Elinor d'Angelis, Gillian Twaite and Jan Knightley, and also thanks to Alan Groucott, Samantha Montgomery, Peter Sutton, Toni Midlane and Jonathan Milton and Alexandra Juckno and the staff of The Shakespeare Institute.