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| THE CHURCH OF STOP SHOPPING ON NATIONAL TV AND RADIO |
| REVEREND BILLY?S GREAT AMERICAN PEACE REVIVAL |
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| dhalleck wrote: Dear Conferees: This weekend in addition to attending the seminar, I will be shooting a project with Reverend Bill and the Church of Stop Shopping. Our performance will be on Sunday afternoon, so those of you who would like, can attend this "service" (4 PM) and participate in a dramatic march to Ground Zero (7 PM). This will be at 56 Walker Street, parallel to and just below Canal. Here is the information about our Reverend Billy shoot: Ceremony to begin at 4PM December 15 at 56 Walker Street (beween Broadway and Church) with later march to ground zero at 7pm leaving from 56 Walker Street. |
We believe that the dearth of entertaining progressive voices in the media must be remedied. The rightwing dominance of the media-sphere is just ridiculous, not to mention dangerous. Enter the preacher who looks like Jimmy Swaggart but sounds like a cross between Jerry Lewis and Carrie Nation. His best-known work is the in-store performances in sweatshop companies like Disney, Starbucks and the Gap, which have been broadcast on PBS, NPR and discussed the Times, the Voice and AP. Now he is ready for a Peace Revival.
The "Stop Shopping" troupe will work with the same core artists: William Henry, the gospel musical director; Dee Spencer, the conductor, Savitri Durkee directing, Tony Torn in the role of dramaturg, and Bill Talen playing the role of the anti-consumerist preacher. (Our troupe is African- Asian- European- and Hispanic American.) Previous venues have been St. Clement?s Playhouse, HERE, Dixon Place, Judson Memorial Church, The Culture Project at 45 Bleecker Street, the Ontological-Hysteric, the DUMBO Spice Factory, the Naumburg Bandshell and Tishman Auditorium in New School University.
The show will be programmed by Free Speech TV, based in Boulder Colorado, and broadcast to the eleven million subscribers on the Dish Network. The radio production will be recorded/edited by Katarina Weingartner, oversighted by Marty Goldensohn, with distribution by Bob Weyersburg of Triage Records. Alternative and college town stations, roughly the listenership of Democracy Now! With Amy Goodman, will be our immediate goal. Both the TV and radio components will be facilitated by DeeDee Halleck, who co-founded Paper Tiger, Deep Dish TV and Free Speech TV and has worked closely with Amy Goodman in expanding her million listener base. The television director is Emmy winner Skip Blumberg, who has a long history of documentation of performance artists, including Alive from Off Center?s Bill T. Jones and Spaulding Gray.
Our format will continue the tradition of previous years - offering a hybrid of joyful song, political comedy sketches and testimonials by activists.The over-riding theme chosen for this first series is Peace and each sub-theme will also relate to the militarization of America: Immigration Rights, Oil, Corporatization and the Militarization of Education, Growth of Prisons and Malls,Development and the Car Culture.
Conservative and commercial voices dominate the media. Progressive causes, and so obviously Peace and anti-Consumerism, are often unreported in the mainstream press. Perhaps it is because they have a whiny or academic tone. Certainly it is the effort by editors and producers to protect their profit centers. We need to find entertaining ways to encourage a humane society; we need to penetrate to the American middle class via the media they most often use. The growing success of Democracy Now! on community radio and satellite television via Free Speech TV has opened up an opportunity for new and popular alternative media. This series will take advantage of these important initiatives to provide a highly produced entertaining programming with serious content.
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