Concept/Actors: Reverend Billy, The Stop Shopping Gospel Choir

Duration: ca. 30 min.
(open-air, starts in front of the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf)

In Coproduktion with the Pumpenhaus Münster

www.revbilly.com

Reverend Billy – The Church of Earthalujah

Reverend Billy is a virtuoso of political entertainment. His performances range from taking confessions in an urban pedestrian zone, to activist interventions in public spaces, to large-scale gospel shows reminiscent of church services. For the Impulse festival he will read the “anti-capitalistic service” to the masses who have come to the Grabbeplatz in Düsseldorf to be amused, proselytize to visitors to the ExtraSchicht in Mühlheim and move people to convert at a large show at the Ringlokschuppen.

Reverend Billy & The Stop Shopping Gospel Choir
Billy Talen is an actor, activist and performance artist from New York. In the 1990s, Talen developed the character of Reverend Billy, which has since come to embody the role of a socio-critical street preacher. He is accompanied during his performances by the Stop Shopping Gospel Choir. He founded the collective Reverend Billy & The Church of Life After Shopping as a pseudo church, which was highly critical of the consumer culture. Some of its most prominent supporters include Joan Baez, Kurt Vonnegut and Amy Goldmann. Its protests – highly critical of consumerism – are directed against large corporations, such as Nike or Starbucks, but they also target political decisions, such as the decision to invade Iraq. In 2009, he stood for election to become the mayor of New York as a candidate for the Green Party.