The Biography

The character of Reverend Billy was developed in the early 1990s by actor and playwright, William Talen. He grew up in small towns throughout Minnesota, South Dakota and Wisconsin. He left home at 16, moving east with Charles and Patricia Gaines, a writer and painter who encouraged him as an artist. Talen began to perform his poems and stories, hitch-hiking from Philadelphia to New York to San Francisco. His chief collaborator in developing the Reverend Billy character was the Reverend Sidney Lanier, a cousin of Tennessee Williams. Lanier was vicar of The St. Clement's in the 1960s, an Episcopal Church in Hell's Kitchen in Manhattan. In an effort to increase attendance at St. Clement's, Lanier had torn out the altar and pews, inviting actors to perform scenes from plays by Tennessee Williams and Terrence McNally, and founding founding the American Place Theater. Lanier described Talen as "more of a preacher with a gift for social prophecy than an actor." In the early 1990s, Talen moved with Lanier to New York City from the San Francisco Bay Area, branding his act as a "new kind of American preacher"