Reverend Billy is a performative character created by Bill Talen and the leader of the Church of Stop Shopping, a performance community based in New York City, where he preaches about the evils of consumerism, advertising and sweatshop labor and protests the loss of neighborhood spirit and cultural authenticity in New York City during and after the mayoral administration of Rudolph Guliani.
Talen (born May 25, 1950) is a Dutch-American Calvinist Minnesota-born, Franconia College-educated actor who moved to New York City from San Francisco in the early 1990s, where he had originally created a character that was a hybrid of street preacher, arguably Elvis, and televangelist called Reverend Billy. This character was performed in various San Francisco alternative theater venues. In New York, Talen began appearing as Reverend Billy on street corners in Times Square, near the recently opened Disney Store.
Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping is a non-profit organization that includes Talen, director Savitri Durkee (who is married to Talen), the 40-member Stop Shopping Choir and the Not Buying It band.
After Reverend Billy’s run for mayor of New York City ended in November 2009, the group turned its attention to what they see as the imminent threat of climate change and environmental disaster. Linking consumerism to the global climate crisis, the group joined the growing movement in Appalachia to end mountaintop removal.
External Links
- The website of ‘Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir’: http://www.revbilly.com/