William Fisher has been training actors and creating new theater works for the more than 20 years. His professional work regularly takes him overseasto London, Hamburg, Germany, and most recently to Iceland . He has directed, devised and mentored projects for the Dubrovnik Summer Festival, the Pula [Croatia] International Theater festival where he is a member of the board of directors and has served as the director of training, and at Kampnagel in Hamburg, Germany and the Vienna Festival where he collaborated as director on an adaptation of A Tomb for Boris Davidovich by Danilo Kis with Bosnia-born musician and composer Vlatko Kucan. Fisher and Kucan continue to collaborate on projects including a larger work provisionally titled The Danilo Kis Project.

In 2009 was a Fulbright Research and Teaching Fellow in the Theory and Practice program in the Theater Department of the Iceland Academy of the Arts in Reykjavik.

At OHIO UNIVERSITY he regularly directs in the main stage season and his productions have included the premier productions of Dan Shea's Killing El Cid (MFA 1999) and Chantal Bilodeau’s The Motherline MFA (2000), and Charles Smith’s Les Trois Dumas, Tartuffe, The Mineola Twins, Cloud 9, Waiting for Godot, and many others.

Following the successful development of the Global Theater Initiative study abroad programs in Croatia and London, he began the GTI NY Summer program in 2008.

Before coming to Ohio University, Fisher taught at The California Institute of the Arts. In Los Angeles from 1986-1992, was founding artistic director of Zeta Collective where he directed and performed ensemble works like the Myths of Freedom trilogy: Freedom of Information, Ready? Begin!, and UnCivil Liberties - The Hype PerFORMance at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE), as well as original plays including one person plays Crowd Work by Paul N. Jones and an adaptation of Franz Kafka's A Report to an Academy.

In the early eighties, Fisher was trained by Etienne Decroux and served as his assistant. After leaving Decroux, he opened his own studio and was guest corporeal mime instructor at the Marcel Marceau School for a short time. Fisher’s essay abouthis mentor "Struggle and Irony/Ashes and Flames" appears in the collection Words on Decroux. In 1998, he returned to training in Suzuki and the Viewpoints with the SITI company and has trained in intensives with SITI and Ann Bogart at every opportunity over the last ten years.

Fisher has been a site reporter for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) theater program and served on the National Movement Theatre Association board of directors and edited Movement Theatre Quarterly. His commitment to the internationalization of the Theater Performance Program has taken him to Bratislava, South Africa, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Wales, Germany, Ireland and England . He has received grants from the US Information Service guest artist program, the Soros Foundation, The Puffin Foundation, California Arts Council, Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department, and the NEA through the National/State/Country partnership in California, as well as numerous funding awards from Ohio University including a grant from the Baker Peace Center to organize Performing Peace, an international symposium. Plans are underway for expansion of the Global Theater Institute at Ohio University including on campus programming and conferences as well as study programs and collaborative productions.