Category Archives: Bill Talen

“What didn’t kill us made us watch”

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billy_endoftheworldBertolt Brecht and Wallace Shawn represent two kinds of political theatre; Reverend Billy represents a third, more raucous and comic variety. The activist persona of Bill Talen, Reverend Billy, it must be said, does not preach to the converted: for almost twenty years, the good Reverend, accompanied by his Church of Stop Shopping Choir, has gained an international reputation for his form of guerrilla political theatre, occupying shopping malls, building atriums, and Times Square to present his anti-corporate message — ever dashing, ever musical, and always thrilling.

All this to mention that the Reverend’s new book, The End of the World, is scheduled for publication by O/R Books in February. In the words of the Web page for the book, “With soaring parables from protests as far apart as the bank lobbies of Barcelona and the underground police cells of New York City, our preacher raises a resounding ‘Earthallujah!’, turning back the devils of debt and destruction, rallying those of radical faith to save themselves and save us all.” Over the past few years, I’ve noted a more surreal, more apocalyptic tone entering the Reverend’s rhetoric, and am looking forward to seeing how far the new perspective reaches. The End of the World is available for purchase here.

The Reverend Billy Project, written by Savitri D and Bill Talen and edited with an introduction by Alisa Solomon, is a fascinating account of the comedian/activist’s career. He was also the subject of the last review I wrote for The New York Times in 2006. His Web site, with much more information, can be found here.

Upcoming: The Reverend Billy anoints St. Christopher (Hedges)

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Chris Hedges and the Rev. Billy Talen.

I’ve had occasion in the very recent past to write items about both Chris Hedges and the Rev. Billy — the grim journalist and explosively comic preacher have little in common when it comes to their public personae, but quite a bit in common when it comes to politics and a supple understanding of globalization, post-capitalism and the dangers inherent in both. So when the two manage to wind up on the same stage — as they will this coming Sunday at 7.30pm at Theatre 80, 80 St. Mark’s Place — I am more than gratified. This Sunday during his regular “Church of Earthalujah” service, the good reverend will “anoint” Hedges and GRITtv’s Laura Flanders new saints in the church in what will be, as usual, a raucous and entertaining ceremony. Tickets are $10.00, but nobody is turned away from a Reverend Billy service (even a beatification), regardless of what they pay.

And this is also a good place to mention that The Reverend Billy Project: From Rehearsal Hall to Super Mall with the Church of Life After Shopping, a new book covering Bill Talen’s career-to-date by Talen, Savitri D and Alisa Solomon, is now available from the University of Michigan Press. Jonathan Kalb says of the book, “The Reverend Billy Project lucidly and perceptively explains the Reverend Billy phenomenon with wry, infectious humor and remarkable intelligence. Though many political activists have used theater and performance to achieve political ends, very few have left such articulate reports on what they did, let alone detailed road maps of the treacherous theatrical, political, and psychological territory they negotiated.” You can order it online at powells.com.

Reverend Billy: Why America Slept

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Something went terribly wrong when dying spectacularly made good media … but we could not go forward with ordinary living, where death has a natural place.

My last review for The New York Times on 22 August 2006 was a notice of “Reverend Billy’s Tent Revival” at South Street Seaport’s Spiegeltent. As I noted in the review, Bill Talen‘s work seemed to me to be somewhat more complex than its parodic surface would indicate. Bill’s been performing as a preacher since 1994, starting on Times Square streetcorners, where he refined his brand of radical comedy, and his venues have been growing larger ever since.

I’ve been unable to follow his career as closely as I would have liked, but noted that my suspicions were becoming confirmed; there is a tragic quality to Bill’s work (which he pursues with his partner, Savitri D), and Bill is unafraid to allow the darkness of doubt into his rhetoric. In the past few days I’ve been reading jeremiads (a uniquely American prose form, as Sacvan Bercovitch’s 1978 book ascertained) by the likes of reporter Chris Hedges; today the Reverend Billy brings his own latest jeremiad to Alternet. “Why America Slept” is a vision of considerable darkness, far from comfortable. In this quality too, Bill is an interesting contrast with some other contemporary downtown performance artists; in an interview today, one of them noted that her own “themes are so dark, but [my] show itself is entertaining and funny, so I would hope that the themes stick with audience members, but in a comforting rather than traumatizing way. … Last night after our invited run-through … another person said, ‘I felt comforted when it was over.’ That’s what we want.” Neither Hedges nor Talen seeks to provide comfort, and I would venture that the best art provides the discomfort that reflects an honest self-knowledge. Certainly this is Talen’s effort:

The American dream turned out to be deadly because it sold tickets to a long series of apocalypses — they are the epitome of good (funny-scary) entertainment.  Then, something went terribly wrong when dying spectacularly made good media — a diverting nightmare shall we say — but we could not go forward with ordinary living, where death has a natural place.  The leaders of the dream, the captains of consumption and militarism — culturally silenced those who thought that death was a natural part of living.  The special effects of mass death continued, while individual death was pushed into endless assisted living, and Americans slept on and on.  We took our imperial eternity for granted.  We shopped and bombed to push back the emptiness.   We swiped the plastic for yet another amazing funny apocalypse.  And then one of them, in mid-joke –

“Why America Slept” can be found in its entirety here. Later this year, the University of Michigan Press will release The Reverend Billy Project, a part of the press’s “Critical Performances” series, written by Talen and Savitri D and edited by Alisa Solomon of the Columbia University School of Journalism, which covers Talen’s career as a radical performance artist.