As the cultural upheaval of the `60s fought its way into the `70s, Bill Talen began his career first as a poet, hitchhiking the interstate highways from the Midwest to the Coasts eagerly engaging the literary, intellectual, and artistic opportunities offered by those cultural venues. He settled in San Francisco where he earned an M.A. in Theatre Arts and joined with friends to open a theatre, "Life on the Water." Here Talen met Sydney Lanier, a minister, who became his lifelong mentor and champion. Lanier recognized in Talen a bold presence which accompanies successful preachers and elevates their sermons. He promoted and supported Talen's move to New York City where Talen fully embraced his role as Reverend Billy and directed the full might of his talents against consumerism--especially Michael Bloomberg's socio-economic goals for the City. Eventually, Talen's critique came to challenge foreign policies that promote corporatism, environmental decline, and the global homogenization of culture. Talen's body of work is extensive and two strong threads run through it that are exemplary. One evidences a complete and purposeful disregard for any artistic borders, especially the edgy land between acting and not-acting, including the tiny gradients as one merges into the other. Talen's recognition of the porosity of borders likely facilitated his willing assimilation of his character, Reverend Billy, into his own daily life and persona, until the two merged, endowing Talen, the performance artist, with the skills and insights of a spiritual leader. The second thread is simply Talen's life's journey from reluctant performer of a religious role, to the willing engagement of that role, and finally the adoption of spiritual responsibility, eventually forming a church and a religion based on activism and a strong commitment to environmental causes. The performance artist became Reverend; the Reverend was born to act. This merging of talents, goals, and dreams created a character who would run for public office. It created a performance artist who would wed lovers, baptize new congregants, and console the grieving.

This thesis gauges the contemporary landscape of political theatre at a time in which everything, and consequently nothing, is political. That is, almost all theatres today proclaim a politics, and yet there is widespread resignation regarding the inevitability of capitalism. This thesis proposes a theory of political action via the theatre: radical theatre today must employ a strategy of "moving targets". Theatrical actions must be adaptable and mobile to seek out the moving targets of capital and track down target audiences as they move through public space. In addition, political theatre must become a moving target to avoid amalgamation into the capitalist system of exchange. I approached this topic through four case studies. Two of the case studies, Reverend Billy's Church of Stop Shopping and the Critical Art Ensemble, are based in the United States. I studied their work via materials - books, essays, videos, websites, interviews, and more - but not in person. The other two case studies are lifted from my own experience with the Christchurch Free Theatre: an original production of Christmas Shopping and a devised production of Karl Kraus' play The Last Days of Mankind. These latter two case studies served as laboratory experiments through which I was able to test ideas and problematics of political theatre that arose through my research. These case studies led to the determination that creating aesthetic experiences and actions - as opposed to having explicitly political content - can be a strategy or foundation for a radical political theatre that resists, undermines, and at times transcends the seeming inevitability of consumer capitalism. In an age in which any political intervention is seen as senseless disruption, a form of pointless violence, this theatre has adopted the strategies of terrorist actions to have a disruptive effect without positing a specific alternative social structure.