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Earth Riot

Reverend Billy and The Stop Shopping Choir

A choir of activist singers from New York bring their joyful, radical music for the Earth to the UK

Reverend Billy and The Stop Shopping Choir. Photo by John Quilty

Reverend Billy and The Stop Shopping Choir are a radical performance community who use the theatre of protest, spectacle and the sincere intensity of song to carry their message. They are Earth-loving urban activists who protect bees, oppose police brutality and create dramatic actions to inspire climate change activism.

Join them for a breathtaking, joyful, and heartbreaking show. Earthalujah!

The Earth Riot Tour is like a cloudburst of melody and rhythm mixed with open conversation about the uprising of our physical world. At a turning point in our lives, as shock extinction accelerates, how do we live and how do we love?  

After performances across the country, the exuberant troupe will reach COP26 International Conference for Climate Change with two shows in Glasgow. Whether COP26 will be so pleased to see them remains to be seen!

Reverend Billy Talen is an actor, performance artist and activist who began his experimental preaching in Times Square in 1994. Soon singers were accompanying his ‘retail Interventions’ inside chain stores, principal targets being Disney, Bayer, Nike and Starbucks.
The Church of Stop Shopping have been entertaining doomsayers at the forefront of climate change activism and anti-consumerist direct action for 20 years. Their shows are a cloudburst of melody and rhythm, a triumph in performance. 

In those 20 years they have kept their secular faith, trespassing while singing, and:

  • been legally excluded from every Starbucks outlet on the planet
  • denounced Micky Mouse as the anti-Christ outside Disney HQ
  • disrupted supermarkets with spontaneous singing and ‘till blessing’ ceremonies
  • preached at ‘funerals’ for independent retail outlets
  • kicked BP sponsorship out of the Tate Modern with an oil bath. 

  • We have reduced capacities to allow for social distancing. There is a 120-person capacity for the theatre (including audiences, artists and staff) which is a 280-seat space.
  • We will open fire exit doors to ventilate the space as best as possible before audiences arrive.
  • Everyone is encouraged to wear masks while in the building including while seated, unless exempt. 
  • We are not checking for lateral flow tests or Covid vaccinations. 
  • We have been working hard to make Toynbee Studios as safe as possible and are committed to an inclusive reopening. Read about the safety measures we have in place. 

Also at Toynbee Studios on 6 November: The Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination (Labofii)

  • This event will be BSL interpreted
  • Toynbee Studios is accessible to wheelchair users.
  • All of our toilets are gender neutral. Fully accessible toilets are located on the ground, first and third floors.
  • Read more about Accessibility at Toynbee Studios.

Date and time

6 November 2021
7.30–9pm
This event will be BSL interpreted

Please note
This is now a past event.

Venue

Toynbee Studios
28 Commercial Street
London, E1 6AB
Tel: 020 7247 5102
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