Brian F. O’Byrne: Playing John Billington | Saints & Strangers

household comprised of a woman children
in her care and husband
oh good every man for himself this sort
of been saying all along John Billington
he’s one of the adventurers who come
over here and he comes with his wife and
two boys he became the first person to
be put on trial and given the sentence
of death so he’s the first person to be
hung it’s a number of years after our
story the Lord blesses us with supper
for one of us at least you want a hearty
supper you kill it yourself when you’re
doing a historical piece it’s difficult
to kind of marry the historical facts
with what we create within our scenes
here we do know that he’s only described
the only description I’ve seen and that
we’ve seen is that he’s described as a
very profane man so I don’t know exactly
what that means but he does have this
spirit off the adventurers and I guess
what Americans would now consider a
can-do spirit he sees himself completely
as an individual and indexer for his
family he is not as much of a team
member as other people although of
course they need each other to survive
but in this he certainly has a streak of
individualism about himself you take
corn not good we knew it to be wrong I’d
do it again
there for the taking Billington rightly
views from his point of view and deep
suspicions of these people I mean
obviously their notion of who the
natives are before they come over is one
deep mistrust acceptance of who the
natives are would be its non-existence I
mean he’s still in our in this fiction
he’s still constantly refers them as
savages so I think that’s where he he
really thinks he’s dealing with this
savages we still see that nowadays
people often
reverse ethnicities in different parts
the world has been savage and less than
and Billington this is completely
appropriate of the time and indeed you
know some could argue it exists in some
way still