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Reverend Billy and The Stop Shopping Choir
05/23/2015 @ 8:00 PM - 9:30 PM
$12
Tickets available at door (advance sales have ended).
Reverend Billy & The Stop Shopping Choir is a radical performance community based in New York City, and they are coming to Chicago to march, sing, and activate our community with a special live performance—ONE NIGHT ONLY.
Tickets at door are suggested donation of $12 for general admission and $10 for students/seniors. Pay-what-you-can!
Reverend Billy & The Stop Shopping Choir are wild anti-consumerist gospel shouters and Earth loving urban activists who have worked on four continents defending community, life and imagination. Over the 15 years of their “church,” the devils have been consumerism and militarism. And in this time of the Earth’s crisis they are especially mindful of the extractive imperatives of global capital. In the performance spectacle “Faster! Monsanto Die! Die!” the devil is Monsanto, the company responsible for Agent Orange, PCBs, GMOs, Bovine Growth Hormone, honey bee-killing Neonicotinoids and Glyphosate, recently designated as a probable carcinogen by the World Health Organization.
Their activist performance and concert stage performance have always worked in parallel. The activism is content for the play. While in Chicago, Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir will join the public and family-friendly March Against Monsanto.
Reverend Billy and The Stop Shopping Choir is co-presented by the Guild Literary Complex and the Peoples Church of Chicago, located in the historic Preston Bradley Center. Your ticket purchase is a donation that supports the work of both organizations in the community, as well as the work of Reverend Billy and The Stop Shopping Choir.
UPDATE: Reverend Billy will “Saint” the Chicago community group We Charge Genocide during the performance, and a portion of ticket sales will go to their community organizing activities. We Charge Genocide is a grassroots, inter-generational effort to center the voices and experiences of young people most targeted by police violence in Chicago.
ABOUT REVEREND BILLY
Reverend Billy is an activist, radio show host, stage performer and author who has been arrested more than 50 times. He has released three CDs, three documentary films, and published three books. He won an OBIE Award, Alpert Award, The Dramalogue Award and The Historic Districts Council’s Preservation Award for his work. He has appeared in press ranging from the CBS Evening News in New York to The BBC World Service, BBC 1 and numerous international print outlets.
This past year, Reverend Billy was arrested twice in Black Lives Matter protests – once in Grand Central Station in New York City and once in Ferguson, Missouri by the all-white police force there. He recently wrote “Racism kills people, yes. …[And racism] kills all the good causes and so it has become the only progressive cause at this time in our history. Racism is the only issue until we are killed by it or we are free of it and we are all free.”
ABOUT THE STOP SHOPPING CHOIR
The Stop Shopping Choir is an all-ages, 40-member singing group, under the direction of Savitri D, and with music director Nehemiah Luckett. The choir represents a diverse array of economic, ethnic, religious, and cultural backgrounds; among them are scientists, teachers, artists, therapists, welders, cyclists, builders, developers, hairdressers, dog walkers, actors, truck drivers, tech geeks, scholars and executives. The Choir has toured in Europe, Africa, South America and throughout North America. They are the subject of Morgan Spurlock’s second feature film, “What Would Jesus Buy?”
In 2014, Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir, artists-in-residence at the Public Theater in New York City, performed their show, “Monsanto is the Devil!” at Joe’s Pub. They staged an organic Thanksgiving meal on the front lawn of Monsanto’s World Headquarters in St. Louis. They also exorcised the Devil from Monsanto’s office in Boston and the Harvard University laboratory where scientists are constructing the Robobee, the mechanical pollinator.
ABOUT OUR PRODUCTION PARTNER
Peoples Church of Chicago is located in the historic Preston Bradley Center in Uptown. Peoples Church of Chicago is a diverse community of open-minded people, liberal Christians, Humanists, and all who are committed to a free and responsible search for truth and meaning. Dedicated to social justice, diversity, and equality, Peoples Church welcomes everyone.