Wm. Bullion and I first met in 2012 at Will Act for Food’s final production, The Reckless Brutal Charge of It, or The Train Play, via my friends Andrew Jordan and Melissa Tropp. Billy had a razor sharp wit, paired with a cunning, cynical sense of humor, rounded out with a jolly amiability, built upon a foundation of fairness and justice. I thought he was brilliant and kind and hilarious.
Words, Words, Words
I sat at his bedside for a time on his final day, Thursday, September 24, 2026, and told him I admired him.
This wasn’t news. I had gushed over his work from our first collaboration on L’Imbecile with Babes With Blades Theatre Company in 2014 and continued to do so when he started the Conspirators.
Billy made theatre that was engaging (literally; the actors would address the audience directly), exciting, absurd, defiant, outrageous, challenging, political, rhythmic, funny, and unique.
On Billy’s last day, I don’t know whether he heard or believed my words of admiration or whether he thought them empty platitudes. But he did seem to hear the next thing I said, which was the distillation of my feelings.
Heart to Heart
As much as Billy’s work impressed me, it was his community spirit that won me over. In the gatherings Billy hosted, online and in person, I felt a sense of camaraderie and goodwill.
Every holiday season following Christmas, Billy had a tradition of writing a series of posts from the perspective of the recipient of the gifts from “The Twelve Days of Christmas.” As more and more surprising and outlandish gifts arrive, Billy wrote how the overwhelmed recipient tries to figure out what to do with a house full of these swans, geese, French hens, turtle doves, calling birds, and partridge, not to mention the rest. I will miss this tradition, so uniquely Billy, which he shared with his friends.
On birthdays, he always wished me, “Happy bidet!”
When someone referred me for a photography assignment, Billy wrote, “Steven is awesome.”
I’ve been in and around the Chicago theatre scene thirty years, but Billy was part of it for far longer. To me, he remembered and he represented the era when Chicago was earning its reputation as the place that did the most interesting, innovative, daring, cutting-edge, ensemble work. In my estimation, this is the kind of work he himself continued—the throughline, if you will, of Chicago’s authentic, truth-seeking art.
At his bedside Thursday, I didn’t know whether he could hear me, but I said what I had truly come to say, from my point of view, for what it was worth.
“You are the heart of Chicago theatre,” I said.
At that, his eyes turned in my direction, he inhaled deeply, and the corners of his lips lifted, a brief grin.
It was the one thing I said that seemed to penetrate. It was the thing that came most from the heart.
After
After my time with Billy, I spoke to Sarah, (in her words) “…Billy’s long time chosen family, co-habitant, Steve’s (RIP) mom, and and and…”
Regular readers of The All Worlds Traveller may recognize Sarah, pictured above, who appears regularly at watershed moments in my photography work, including my first ever theatre gig. She is Pandora, for example, and she is ghosts.
We took turns, talking and listening, among the family, the nurse, and other visitors present. Sorting through thoughts and feelings until all had been said. The next morning, Sarah shared via Billy’s social media that he had passed on. I am sincerely grateful to her and to Billy’s family for allowing the time to say goodbye and for the time and space to sort things out.
My time knowing Billy is like a series of postcards, one on top of another—meeting at “the Train Play;” working together on L’Imbecile and the Conspirators show; meeting around Chicago in this event and that over a decade and a half; conversations online; the charismatic superhero dog, Captain Steve, charmingest of the charming, who Billy deeply loved; visiting the new house when Billy and Sarah moved in; delivering silly socks to their home during the pandemic as a care package for Billy’s first ((cancer)) surgery.
I remember talking to Billy after watching the Conspirators’ The Resistible Rise of Herr Helmut Drumpf days prior to the 2016 election, thinking the events in the play were cautionary tales of what might happen in an alternate, though impossible, reality. Then, I remember watching them happen in real life in the years to follow.
I haven’t previously shared the pre-Distant-Era work Billy and I made on The All Worlds Traveller. However, I’ll conclude this post with two such galleries in tribute.
L’Imbecile
In 2014, Babes With Blades brought me on to photograph preproduction images for their next show, L’Imbecile, a gender-swapped post-apocalyptic non-operatic adaptation of Rigoletto by Aaron Adair, directed by Billy Bullion.
Greg Inda was looking for something to do and volunteered to accompany me on the shoot. He brought a few new toys—some fill light and a Lensbaby—that made for a far better session than the ones I’d done previously.
At the shoot, Billy explained the concept of neo-commedia (The Style). In my own observation, correctly or incorrectly, I saw it as a rhythmic, exaggerated, cartoonish style of stark light and shadow and clown makeup, where timing was everything.
The Conspirators work exclusively in a neo-commedia style called The Style. Initially developed by Los Angeles stalwarts The Actors’ Gang and Chicago’s own New Crime Productions, The Style combines the basics of classic Commedia dell’Arte with intense emotional states and influences like Kabuki, Kathakali, Bugs Bunny and a high-energy punk-rock esthetic that a critic once called “a coke-fueled clown nightmare.” Elements of The Style include grotesque makeup and costume, stylized movement punctuated by percussion, audience address and malevolent satire. In Chicago, The Style has been seen in Mary-Arrchie’s The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, Babes With Blades’ L’Imbécile and New Crime’s The Balcony, Alagazam…After the Dog Wars and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. The Conspirators have proudly built upon the work of our progenitors to create a highly acclaimed body of work since 2016. The Style is also an amazing spectacle in its Free Style improvisational mode, employing a live “style coach” barking calls to the performers as they create real-time on-stage insanity, seeming pulling transcendent lazzi out of thin air.
Excerpt on The Style from the Conspirators website.
The resulting show was then, and remains now, as my favorite Babes With Blades production I have ever seen. Distant Era MVP Elizabeth was in the show. Sarah Scanlon was on percussion. It was wild and strange and immersive, with the performers speaking directly to the audience and interacting among them. It felt part Renaissance faire, part clown, part far future post-apocalypse (like the strange societies encountered in Jack Vance’s The Dying Earth), all fun, and pure theatre in a way that could not be translated to any other medium.
I knew and liked Billy upon first meeting him. But when I saw L’Imbecile, I witnessed his genius.
The Deckchairs, or Make the Titanic Great Again
Four years after L’Imbecile, Billy brought me on to photograph the Conspirators’ show The Deckchairs, or Make the Titanic Great Again in 2018. I was glad to have a chance to make another one with him after a few years of experience.
In truth, I was only getting started—having photographed The Deckchairs at the same time I entered the photography training program at Chicago Photography Academy. It would be another year before I’d dream up Distant Era. I wish Billy and I had done more work together. On the other hand, I’m grateful we got to make what we did, and L’Imbecile remains one of my favorite theatrical productions I’ve seen.
Down the Road
A few years ago, my friends Ted and Jackie treated me to a concert featuring the one of the most authentically personable singer-songwriter-poets—Peter Mulvey—at Space in Evanston. I bought his latest album, shook his hand, and bid him farewell.
Peter Mulvey replied, “I’ll see you on down the road.”
I loved that expression. They were my last words to Billy.
In my experience, dedicated poets and the artists—like Peter Mulvey and Wm. Bullion—fearlessly strive to see what is and to present it authentically in their style and through their experience. They are not swayed by popular opinion, by trends. They see insightfully, incisively, and they show their vision for those who care to see. Billy told the truth as he saw it. To me, Billy represented what was the most authentic about us. He wasn’t afraid to say what he felt, and he had few illusions about himself. To me, he represented the quintessence of Chicago theatre.
I’m going to miss him very much.
