 Establish the award to honour an individual, organisation or company for their outstanding contributions to the performance community. Edwin Booth Award, back in 1983, went to the Royal Shakespeare Company and since then has gone to such worthy recipients as Richard Foreman, Tony Kushner, Karen Finlay, Woody King, Jr. and last year's recipient, Marie Irene Fornes, but tonight we are here to celebrate perhaps our largest group of honorees yet, Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir. So to kick things off and to introduce Reverend Billy and the choir in a ringly worshipful manner, I would like to welcome the newly minted Doctor, Dan Venning. Thank you all very much. I'm Dan Venning. I recently finished my dissertation in the PhD program at theatre here. Thank you. I wrote on Shakespeare in 19th century German nation building, not contemporary activist performance, but I wanted to speak because during my decade at the Graduate Center, Reverend Billy's work has been a crucial part of my theatre going, my scholarship and my very experience here in New York City. I'm here to talk about Reverend Billy, Savitry and the Church of Stop Shopping, but because their work is unique, I'm going to borrow a bit from their form. Because this is Billy, this isn't a speech of introduction, it's an invocation. And it wouldn't be an invocation if I didn't start with a few bars from one of their songs from their 2004 album, a song with some lyrics about issues that are still very important to them. So you'll have to excuse me. And I don't know what it is, buys a lot less, here's a million bucks for a breath of fresh air, okay take a number, the line's over there. Thank you for helping out, I needed it. That song links issues that remain important to their work, consumerism and our need for a clean earth. Reverend Billy, Savitry and the Church of Stop Shopping have created a revolutionary and unique kind of performance in New York, stretching the boundaries of performance art and activism and making a great mark upon even agnostics like myself. So my invocation is going to be a personal narrative of these interactions I've had over the last decade with Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir. I moved to New York in August 2006 to come to the Graduate Center, less than a month after moving here in September, I went to see Reverend Billy's tent revival as the first doctoral theater students association outing that year at the Spiegel tent down in the South Street Seaport. I remember the entrance of the choir, much like today, singing Stop Shopping. I remember their song No Logo, Are You My Lover or My Logo, that lyric still stuck with me. I remember pledging not to go into Victoria's Secret for a full decade because at the time Victoria's Secret printed their magazines, which they sent out en masse on new paper. They refused to use recycled paper. It was an incredible waste of resources mixed with blatant consumerism. And so I stood up and pledged, admittedly it was easier for me than for some others to stay out of Victoria's Secret. This is a point I'll come back to later. I come from a place of great privilege, and Billy is committed to the principles of diversity and helping give voice to those who must be heard. There were a couple of people who didn't stand up from our group. Jean Graham Jones razzed them about it afterwards. She did too, yeah. So Reverend Billy is a revivalist preacher, except instead of preaching fundamentalist Christianity or ultra-conservative dogma, he speaks out against consumerism, giant corporations, and various infringements upon public space. He talks about the freedom of speech, human rights, and the environment. As their website, www.revbilly.com, notes, much of their work is, quote, devoted to inspiring people to challenge the consumerism, racism, and militarism that are killing our planet. Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping offer up a DIY spirituality for activists, a heady mix of humor, insightful critique, passionate commitment, emotional catharsis, an example after example of creative, joyful, earth-inspired, direct action, end quote. As Savitri told me on the phone a couple weeks ago, much of their work now is devoted to preserving our fragile earth, but they've returned to their original moniker, the Church of Stop Shopping, since that's what they've always been known as. It's the earliest days of performing exorcisms on cash registers and invading Starbucks. Their name has changed, so in 2008 they were the Church of Life After Shopping. They became the Church of Earth Aluia, but they're back to what we've always known them as now. My next interaction with Billy was in June 2008 when I went to the Mermaid Parade, and there they were, the King and the Queen. Savitri and Billy were staunch defenders of that playground of New York, striving to keep it from commercial development and gentrification. After the parade, Savitri went on a hunger strike, broadcast on the internet, to protest this planned development. She writes about their work in their co-authored book of essays, The Reverend Billy Project, from rehearsal hall to super mall with the Church of Life After Shopping, University of Michigan 2011, which I reviewed in TDR. The book describes their interventions, protests that landed them in jail that transformed corporate policy and the things against which they protest, like environmentally dangerous dams in Iceland, the Arkadon Mega Mall, a consumerist paradise in Berlin's Potsdamer plots, or American Idol, finally ending now, which they describe as demonstrating, quote, consumerized democracy at a low point, money the medium through which all else flows. Their book also demonstrates the slippage between Bill Tal and the performer and Reverend Billy the character. At times it's unclear where Tal's voice ends and Reverend Billy begins. That's because he has this total belief in his work that is beyond admirable. In 2009, Reverend Billy ran for mayor, challenging Bloomberg who ran as a Republican and who almost exactly two years later would use police force to kick out the populist Occupy movement in the middle of a cold night. Billy was backed by the Green Party and voting for him was one of the few times that I haven't voted Democrat. At Athens, the Association for Theater and Higher Education in 2011, I met Savitry and Bill in person to do an interview for Ecumenica. At the conference, Billy did a solo performance and then the next day they spoke on a panel in conversation with Elisa Solomon, Jill Dolan, and former Booth Award winners Peggy Shaw and Lois Weaver of Split Bridges. This was in the historic, opulent, expensive Palmer House Hilton Hotel, a hotel like many with a Starbucks under its lobby, a hotel that I couldn't afford to stay in as a graduate student. They had just come from San Cristobal de las Casas in Chiapas, Mexico. We talked about their work, their philosophy, their activism, plural, and their performance. Their activism and their performances are one in the same. We talked about how the causes for which they perform are linked, too. In Billy's words, there is a relationship between, quote, the Earth's crisis, climate change, extinction waves, even what seem to be tectonic events as well, these great shifts in the physical systems of the Earth, the relationship of the grand scale of such extreme Earth events and our local politics such as public space and housing and immigration. We talked about the way the Reverend persona gives Billy the freedom to shout at people. There are only certain characters that have that permission, he said. Rock and Rollers and Preachers are two of them. Anticipating debates about net neutrality, we talked about how they predicted corporations would try to take over the internet. And we talked about my agnosticism, my imperfections. I go to Starbucks, they sign my book, quote, Onward, Brother Daniel, the lion won't bite if you get out of S-Bucks. I'm a leftist, but I'm a deeply sinning one. Billy, in contrast, has total belief in what he does. He creates real revolutionary performance. It's nearly 10 years after I moved to New York to get my degree, and it's a real honor to be able to speak at this event. Reverend Billy's revolutionary performance has transformed the landscape of New York theater. That's what the Booth Award is about. But he's also transformed my experiences as a theater goer, as a scholar. And more than that, he works to transform the world into a better place. So to that, let's all say hallelujah. So now it's my chance to turn the mic over to a doctoral student here, Nina Mercer, who is presenting our sermon. Everybody, welcome. I'm glad to be here to give this sermon. I don't think I've ever given a sermon before in my life. And I'm sitting over there, and I'm like, I'm a first-year student. I can't believe they've been giving me the mic. It's kind of dangerous, because I'm not quite woven in all the way yet. But I'm here, I think, mostly as a theater practitioner. And I'm here to kind of talk about and acknowledge the bridge that we must strengthen between the academy and the street, where the performance happens. So I'm going to start with a quote or a passage, actually, from Amiri Baraka's essay, Bopra Theory. Theater in the United States is obstructed in its development by the same forces that obstruct the general positive development of human life and society. Frequently, we are stalled by our very amazement at the rulers of this society, shrieking for years of their superiority when one has only to look around to see what a mess they have made of everything and what a bizarre lie this superiority is. Even lower animals cause less trouble to the planet. But the superstructural control of intellectual development is critical to our penetration of socially dynamic aesthetic theory in this country with its fake democracy and real imperialism. We must step outside the parameters of this society's version of just about everything. Often, we seek to use as one alternative practices found in the oldest root of performance, ritual. But not in a frozen or atavistic way. We take the wholeness, the freshness, the penetrating emotionalism and spiritual revelation and renewal, the direct connection with what the ancients meant. We want to educate, but we want to do that through the transformation of the human consciousness. We want to open it. We want to show the known world to be as irrational as it actually is. And we want to bring the approaching epoch of human quality closer to reality through our open embrace. We want news. We want olds. We want the constant beat of life in its material existence. That's Amiri Baraka, Baraka Thea. What is expressed in this passage from Amiri Baraka's essay, Bapra Theory, is what brought me to commit to the wildly generative life of performance and theater as a cultural worker. And it is, in my opinion, a kindred call to action to the years of work and inspiration provided by our honorees, Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir. And here we are at the City University of New York's Graduate Center, not in the streets or at a rally, but in this very privileged space where ideas eventually become theoretical discourse, where we write essays that become conference papers and books shared among a community of peers. What's the connection? Well, I believe honoring the work of Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir here is crucial in this city we love, New York City, and its surrounding boroughs of Staten Island, Queens, Brooklyn, and the Bronx, or the Boogie Down, as I like to call it, and all of its pulsing streets and booming subway platforms, its irrepressible people driven to life, its loud talk and radical action, its fight against gentrification and eviction and police brutality. We here must be abridged to the city's constant beat of life. In that way, we deepen our ties to this culture and the people, celebrating their voices and concerns. This is the work, too. This, too, is why we are here. Today, as we honor Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir, let us do so as scholars who choose to acknowledge cultural worker Toni Kade Bambara's call when she said, the work of the writer, and in our case, the scholar, is to make the revolution irresistible. While we certainly can't do that on our own, nor should we want to try, my hope is that we will constantly interrogate our motives, that we will affirm our connection to community, and that we will practice that method in our research, writing, and teaching, realizing that we do play a part in transforming society when we open up our field and acknowledge those who have been committed to agitation, protest, and inspirational performance for years. Thank you. Once you give an event to your neighbor for Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir. This next song we will sing for you is Get Home Safe, Man Down, Brother Down. Through it, we watch the journey of a week in New York City, and we celebrate life, but we also realize that life is not always easy. Talking all the morning, get home safe. Tuesday schools are early, wandering through. John Sims from Florida, the sunny beaches of Florida. I was on the beach yesterday. The Reverend Billy crew called me last week and said, yeah, we need to have you up here. And I really appreciate being able to be here and celebrate this moment with these incredible artists. You know, I'm really happy to be here and to recognize these folks, these soul savers. That's what they are on some level. And they've been doing this critical work, not only in New York City, but all across the country. That's what makes it so fascinating and beautiful. And, you know, I'm a political artist, and I've been working in the trenches on the Confederate flag for over 15 years. And before it was cool to talk about it before it was in the media when my art friends told me, why are you doing this, that kind of thing. And, you know, it was very important because I had the opportunity to go to Gettysburg and lynch the Confederate flag there in 2004. And then last year I organized 13 flag funerals across the South before the Charleston shootings. But a lot of that kind of vision came with identifying these incredible artists that have come before, like Miri Baraka who I've worked with and Karen Finley who I think has gotten this award before. And also Reverend Billing, his incredible choir, who's been very inspirational being able to take important issues out of the classrooms, out of the books, and take them and deliver them right to people's hearts, right? And connect them to the legislation, and collect them to the voting, and to where really matters. So I really appreciate this, you know, being able to learn from these important artists that delicate dance between art and activism, and showing the importance of performance art. You know, as a device to engage the process that matters the most, the spiritual one, you know, the emotional one, the one that changes hearts and behavior and personal politics. So this event is not only an opportunity to celebrate the fearless ways that art can lead to our most sensitive and difficult conversations, but it's also to bear witness to the evolution of a super intelligent creative performance system that has worked long and hard to counterbalance the rising social economic pathologies that have brought sickness upon our humanity, our community, and our precious mother earth. This is also an opportunity for us to be inspired by this great work of Henri's today so that we may be energized to become part of the solution in that part of the problem. So my testimony here, have a testimony. All right, ready? All right. In between the spaces of advocacy and performance that was born a preacher, a real preacher from the state of Minnesota, preaching and teaching and reaching realness and truth from the pulpit of common sense and social justice. This preacher, that preacher, was not born as such but created in the performance spaces of San Francisco and the streets of New York City. And in time, there was a square, time square, where this preacher man preached and the folks clapped and the choir was born. And with his partner and the choir and holy calling to a perversive, to a subversive performative intervention, Reverend Billy led the attack on American consumerism and militarism through satire, beyond the robes and to the core mission of saving minds, communities and our planet. Earth, hallelujah. Commits in burning man, it's the books running for man. Quite escape it and we miss him so much. In fact, the song that you were singing is a song that we wrote with Benny so many years ago. And one of the last times we saw him, he was playing it on a gigantic grand piano in Charleston, West Virginia. The thing about Benny is that everyone always gathered around his piano to sing. He had a special ability to attract singers. And finally, Derek McGinty, who John mentioned earlier, who an irrepressible force in the world really, in this community, a great dancer, great singer, great performer, great soul, who we lost to AIDS six years ago. I know because it was just a couple of months after my daughter was born. And thank God that she was born or I would have died of grief, I think. But these three men came to New York to make theater, to be on stage. And they were singers, dancers, composers. And they came here like kings with gifts and we were so lucky that they shared those gifts with us. I'm grateful to have been on the boards with them all over the world and all of you too. So they would be honored to be here, I think, because they were theater people. We're not all theater people, but those three really, heart and soul, they were theater people and would just be beyond happy to join this incredible list of people you've honored in the past. New York can really break your heart, you know? I know you know what I mean. So how do we keep going? Lately, I've been hearing John Coltrane in my head, his voice doubled and tripled and quadrupled just saying, I love supreme, I love supreme, I love supreme. And I laugh with my mom, I'm a commune child and so I said, mom, I finally got a mantra. She's like, what is it? I was like, it's John Coltrane. Nah, she's an old beatnik so she got that. Anyway, today I really want to extend my gratitude to the brave warriors of ACT UP, those shining stars and the thousands of them of humans, many gendered humans who lost their lives to AIDS, so many performers and actors and show people. And I walk around and I miss them. I think they could have been right there. They could have been doing that. They might have been doing that. I think I see this sort of negative space of that whole community of people. So thank you. I dedicate all of this to you tonight. Amazing people, thank you. Your stories and your lives and your deaths will help us all defend the earth. I know that. And I also would like to take a moment to thank Reverend Billy, who's not speaking tonight because he's been on the road for three weeks and has had 20 gigs in 23 days and we thought just this once, we'll just talk to him. Billy, I want to thank you. You carry the wilds in you. You carry wildness in a way I can barely describe, but more than any human I've ever known, you have the wilds in you. And I'm so grateful. I'm so grateful. You are so dangerous and strange. And thank you. And because I'm an old school, I like to thank my teachers. And I think all of us here have a lot of teachers to thank. We wouldn't be here without them, so let's all say together. Thank you, teachers. Thank you, teachers. Here we are at CUNY. I know many teachers come from CUNY, so thank you in advance for your future teaching and whatever teaching you may have done in the past. Among our teachers, Sidney Lanier, who was Billy's mentor and really talked him into this character, and the thousands and thousands of species of mushrooms and nutes and moss and trees and mammals and fish and birds, jellyfish and I'm leaving lots of them out, but dragonflies, all the other species who are not in this room with us tonight, we thank you because you are really our teachers now. And that is who we have to really listen to now, those other creatures and the earth itself, so respect. Thank you all so much. Well, so much has been said about our dearest Reverend Billy Savitri and the incredible Stop Shopping Choir, so I'll just say a couple little short, short. Do we keep going, Savitri? We need each other and someone who's really kept me going has been the Reverend Billy and all of these people because we are sisters in street performing. We work on the street. There's nothing between us and them. There's nothing between us and you or there's nothing between all of us and it's fucking hard. It's scary and it's dangerous and it doesn't make any money and then Trump wins and it goes on and on and on and we need each other so badly and this community has served me so greatly and when I think of the Reverend on the streets in Times Square and your very, very early days out there by yourself or in those Disney stores just changing up that text and changing up all that stuff in there, I know what that feels like and when I think of you doing that and I know that you're doing that, I know that I can keep going on and when I see all of you doing it, I know that I can keep going on and when you come and play at my benefits it really helps us keep going on too. So your hero, your saints, your inspirations, your angels, your my strength and I thank you so much and at this point we wanna open the floor to you all students of theater and choir members and friends and general public and say does anybody out here wanna give a little testimony to the choir, to Reverend Billy, to Savitri, a word or two of love from your heart. We open it up now to the world. I think for a minute. Well, I just tell you this, you know there was this nurse and she was at work and she was like, oh my God, what is wrong with this person? I gotta take some notes here. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a rectical thermometer and thought oh my God, some assholes got my pencil. Okay, now during that moment you thought of something that you wanted to say. Anybody wanna give a word to the reverberant? It was a dog storming on. Actually, no, it was a very, very, very hot evening, 2004 and it was during the RNC. That night was when the cops went after all the bikers in critical mass and chased them over to St. Mark's Church. And we, a whole bunch of people we stayed inside in solidarity while the cops were on the outsides. And while I was hanging out, it was so hot but I heard some music going on. Let me go inside and check this shit out in there. So I go in and I see a choir and as hot as it was, they all had robes on. I was like, this is insane. And I'm looking and I see that man in front of the choir and he says, children, the reverend's hot. Do you mind if I take my clothes off? And I'm like, oh, here we go. And he proceeds to take off, at least he left his pants on, but he took everything off except for the priest collar. But these people are psycho. And it's kind of, you know, but you know, yeah, they're psychos, so am I. So it's like, ah. And I look in the corner and I see this woman with her hair in a handkerchief, wild, wild, unruly, beautiful hair wrapped up in her bandana. And I don't know why I got this thought. I said, that's his wife. I've never seen these people before in my life. And so it was fast forward into a few months later. It's 2005, it's January. And I used to write for this Anarchist newspaper, The Shadow, and the editor tells me, you gotta go over and interview Reverend Billy. He's over at Red Square. I know he has rehearsals there on Sunday. So I go over there, hey, hi, can I interview, I'm gonna interview for The Shadow. And he just looks at me. He says, why don't you sit over there? And he sits me down to where everybody's singing. And he sits me over to this wonderful woman over here, this diva. And everybody starts singing. And I said, why am I sitting here? I don't sing. I can't sing. Why am I doing here? This is so fucking weird. And the end of the show, I mean, end of rehearsal, he says, come back next Sunday. And I've been there ever since. Now who else wants to testify? Any more testimony from the choir? I see a soulful soul right here. So I came to the choir in 2009 in the midst of Billy running for mayor. And I think one thing that's lost in a lot of people when they think about the choir is how much of a community, the individuals in the choir actually are. And how much we hang out outside of singing and how much we rely on each other and support each other in all of our endeavors and make babies with each other too. Yeah. It's really trippy to leave one place. I moved from Miami in 2009, sort of like running away from conservative Cuban parents and a lifetime of all of that. And finding this family of 40 people who just are the most open and the most giving group of people you've ever met, really. And just like any family, there are frustrations and there are conflicts and there are all types of things, but they're over above everything else. There's so much love. And I think that just is reflected in like every time we're on stage, I think people feel that. And I think that's what opens people up to what the choir has to say. And I'm forever grateful for both of you. You're, I can't think of two people who are more deserving of this award because you guys, we're a community because of you two and as a product of it. And yeah, we all go off on our own things, but at the end of the day, it's always Billy with the mic in the front. That keeps us coming back. So thank you. That's it. That's all I wanted to say. Donald. So a friend of mine said like, knew I like to sing a lot and he just invited me to join a gospel choir. I was like, whoa, gospel music, sure. You know, I've really never done that. I was mostly into medieval music and Renaissance music. Gospel, sure, why not? And it ended up being the church of stop shopping gospel choir, which was a real surprise. But the program that we were doing, this was like probably the, the iteration of this current choir was for the, to save the Poe House, which NYU was bound and possessed to tear down. And real Reverend Billy was bound and possessed to save. And like when out of his way and several times got arrested many times and we had this amazing show at the new school. And after the show happened, we all got up and we all had like little candles and things and we walked down to the Poe House. And the point was going to be, we were going to read the Raven. So we get there and Reverend Billy didn't have his glasses. So he grabs me, kind of knows me and probably knows I can probably read and make. And be kind of fabulous. And like, so he gives me the bullhorn and I'm like leading this huge crowd of people reading the Poe House, I mean reading the Raven. And that's going beautifully, beautifully. And suddenly like I'm out of the corner of my eyes. I'm seeing we are being encroached by the police. They're getting closer and closer and they're clearly not going to put up with this for too much longer. And we're only about halfway through the poem. And I'm kind of going, and I have like a church job the next morning and like, you know, like sort of Christmas time. And I'm wondering, what's in my pocket? Ooh, I really hope we don't get arrested. Because I could be in real trouble. Luckily, they only arrested Reverend Bill. So I knew I am in for a terrific run and believe me it has been. And I just love you all and just all the family. I mean, there've been so many people have come and gone and come and gone. And it's just been just like such a beautiful, beautiful experience and family. And just being out into public and like public space and like really taking it back. It's thrilling. Thank you. One more? Is there one last one? Are we gonna read? So. Two. I joined this choir last year and prior to joining this choir, joining this choir, I was one of those devil's children who never felt the Holy Spirit during evangelical sermons. And I mean, I actually found a church where I can feel it. So maybe that's a better, that's a nice congregation I joined. I feel like I actually joined a worthwhile church. I really got into activism actually in the Graduate Center here with a professor known named Anastasenko. And I learned about this thing called the transformative activist stance. But I never realized that you can, you can have that transformative activist stance in an art context. So after I found out about the choir, I was like, I have to join this because you can be an activist and an artist at the same time and perform. And this is like, still, I feel like I'm in a dream right now because I still cannot believe that you can perform and protest at the same time. It's very new to me. And I also love the community. Hello, I'm Laura Newman and with Donald we're two of the oldest members. I joined, I was at that Poe show, but as far as origin stories go, which I think is the theme here, why we're here. And my origin story was the show previous to that one at the Culture Project, which was also completely sold out. And I was brought there by Stephen Duncan in an academic context. It was part of the Gallatin program at New York University where I had managed to find out that you could take an anthropology class and get history credit. And that was really sweet. And so I did that instead of studying the Civil War again. And I ended up being put into this class all about activism. And I was a theater major at New York University. I wanted to be a Broadway singer and all this kind of stuff. And suddenly I was in this really fascinating environment looking at how life is theater and theater is activism and activism is communication and communication is spiritual. And there were like big bold themes kind of arising. And I started to realize that I wasn't studying how to sing and dance. Like I was studying the nature of reality. And so when we went to the Reverend Billy show, I was literally converted. And this is why I joined the group, why I think our work is really powerful and why I'm a fan of it as much as I am a participant in it. I went to a show at the Culture Project and sat there as just a normal kind of liberal arts theater kid working at Starbucks and wondering how I was gonna make money. And at the end of the show, I became an activist. And I actually went outside and helped perform an illegal activity holding a slingshot and while people put paintballs in it and threw them at an advertisement for about.com. And it was just exhilarating. The police came, we ran away. That was like part of it. You know, like I ran down this alley and I was like, what is this? Like, it was so exciting. I mean, I never had a piece of theater. A, got me out of my seat and B, like put me in the street and made me perform something with a group of strangers that was really passionate and strange and illegal and felt right, you know? And I grew up in the Episcopal Church, which is very much about pump and circumstance and the British traditions of Anglican music and choir like collars that go like this, little coffee filters, you know? You stand very still and sing Mozart. So for me to A, have that revelation as a theater performer and writer. The spiritual side of it is just as important for me. I had started to disentangle myself from the Christian church around the same time and to find an outlet for that faith and that like conviction, you know? Where instead of singing about Jesus, I could sing like the First Amendment and it would feel like the same feeling in my body of like, I believe and I like that ecstatic spiritual state that I was supposed to give up because I wasn't Christian anymore. You know, I didn't have to do that. So I am who I am because of all of you and Billy and Savitri and it's been an amazing journey. It's been almost half my life. I've been in this group. I joined when I was 20 years old, so thank you. See us off and then if you wanna join us upstairs for some Breaking of the Bread and some wine, just make sure if you're not a GC person to bring your program with you so that you don't get stopped by security. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.