Reverend Billy Talen

Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir is a New York City based radical performance community, with 50 performing members and a congregation in the thousands.

We are wild anti-consumerist gospel shouters and Earth loving urban activists who have worked with communities on four continents defending community, life and imagination. Our Devils over the 15 years of our "church" have remained the same: Consumerism and Militarism. In this time of the Earth's crisis - we are especially mindful of the extractive imperatives of global capital.

Our activist performance and concert stage performance have always worked in parallel. The activism is content for the play. Our Director for both kinds of performances is Savitri D.

We have won an OBIE Award, the Alpert Award, The Dramalogue Award and The Historic Districts Council's Preservation Award (for leading demonstrations to save Manhattan's Poe House), and half of our singing activists have been jailed, most frequently during Occupy Wall Street. Reverend Billy has been arrested about 70 times.