Reverend Wilby

The character of Reverend Billy was developed in the early 1990s by actor and playwright William Talen. His family was Dutch Calvinist, from the Christian Reformed Church, a conservative protestant denomination. Talen grew up in small towns throughout Minnesota, South Dakota and Wisconsin. He left home at 16, moving east with Charles and Patricia Gaines, a writer and painter who encouraged him as an artist. Talen began to perform his poems and stories, hitch-hiking from Philadelphia to New York to San Francisco. Talen's chief collaborator in developing the Reverend Billy character was the Reverend Sidney Lanier, a cousin of Tennessee Williams. Reverend Billy's sermons decried the evils of…

|alt=]] The Stop Shopping Choir is a 35-member ensemble that performs an array of original gospel songs in theater performances and alongside Reverend Billy in public spaces during campaigns. The choir began accompanying Talen's sermons at concert shows shortly after the September 11 attacks, adding a musical influence to Reverend Billy performances. The Choir often write songs that draw attention to the environmental and consumerist campaigns championed by the Church of Stop Shopping. They have accompanied Talen into the lobbies of multinational banks such as JP Morgan Chase or research facilities belonging to Monsanto, dressed as golden toads and honeybees, singing songs in support of the…