***** Jill Lane, "Reverend Billy: Preaching, Protest, and Postindustrial Flanerie," _TDR: The Drama Review_ 46.1 (Spring 2002): <http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/the_drama_review/v046/46.1lane.pdf>:
... How can artists address the devastating effects and casualties of the new global economy, when the representation of power is itself now nomadic, liquid, and on the move? CAE [Critical Art Ensemble] contends that rather than stage opposition, our only viable option is to create calculated "disturbance" in these networks of power. What role then can performance play as a site of such disturbance? Bill Talen's work as Reverend Billy offers one trenchant set of answers to those questions,revitalizing political street theatre as a sophisticated repertoire -- or arsenal -- of anticonsumerist theatre techniques. Indeed, Reverend Billy offers us a model of politicized "theatre disturbance" that follows, engages,and creatively speaks back to the multiplying sites of privatization that have colonized urban public culture. From his beginnings as a sidewalk preacher protesting the corporate redevelopment of Times Square in New York City, Reverend Billy has taken his theatrical activism to a range of sites, most of which are what he calls "contested spaces": those urban sites that have been recently commodified, or newly condemned, to commercialization. In this vein, he has staged numerous "shopping interventions" in which he and fellow artists perform in commercial spaces themselves -- from the Disney Store to Starbucks -- in an effort to intervene in (disturb) the seamless corporate architecture and choreography of shopping, or to "re-narrate" them with memories of the lives they displace. Talen also regularly lends the Reverend to a range of staged "political actions" related to the destruction or gentrification of local urban spaces, and of the social memories which they house.... ***** -- Yoshie
* Calendar of Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html> * Anti-War Activist Resources: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/activist.html> * Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/>