Bill Talen

"I don't write under the burden of having to be funny," said author/actor Bill Talen, whose one-man show "Cooking Harry" opens Sunday at the Cast Theatre. Harry is Talen's Uncle Harry, and the cooking refers not only to the actor's metaphoric roasting of his relative, but the Iowa backyard barbecue where much of it is set. "It's a true story," Talen, 36, explained, "expressing some of the disenchantment with the gentrification of a man who'd meant a great deal to me."

Familiar in his clerical collar, cream-colored suit and dyed-blond pompadour, the Rev. Billy has spent much of the last decade parading through the streets of Manhattan, shouting through a megaphone messages such as: "Mickey Mouse is the anti-Christ!" Accompanied by a robed choir belting out gospel songs, the Rev. Billy condemns the "Disneyfication" of Times Square and warns that Wal-Mart is part of the "consumer axis of evil." To passersby, the preacher who shouts: "Can I get a change-a-lujah?"

Familiar in his clerical collar, cream-colored suit and dyed-blond pompadour, the Rev. Billy has spent much of the last decade parading through the streets of Manhattan, shouting through a megaphone messages such as: "Mickey Mouse is the anti-Christ!" Accompanied by a robed choir belting out gospel songs, the Rev. Billy condemns the "Disneyfication" of Times Square and warns that Wal-Mart is part of the "consumer axis of evil." To passersby, the preacher who shouts: "Can I get a change-a-lujah?"

"I don't write under the burden of having to be funny," said author/actor Bill Talen, whose one-man show "Cooking Harry" opens Sunday at the Cast Theatre. Harry is Talen's Uncle Harry, and the cooking refers not only to the actor's metaphoric roasting of his relative, but the Iowa backyard barbecue where much of it is set. "It's a true story," Talen, 36, explained, "expressing some of the disenchantment with the gentrification of a man who'd meant a great deal to me."

David Ford's "Too Good to Be True" will be given a staged reading at 7:30 p.m. Monday at South Coast Repertory, 655 Town Center Drive. The play, about employees of a national AIDS charity, won second prize last week in SCR's California Playwrights Competition for unproduced scripts.

Bill Talen's solo show, "Cooking Harry," at the Cast Theatre only lasts an hour; but there's something to it. The title refers to Talen's Uncle Harry, once born-to-run, now condemned to barbecuing burgers out by the pool. But, as with a Spalding Gray monologue, the real subject is the storyteller.

Part horror movie, part agitprop theater, "What Would Jesus Buy?" is a documentary on a mission. Loud, proud and cheeky, the film runs roughshod over corporate behemoths Disney, Starbucks and Wal-Mart as it preaches a sermon of simplicity and consumer awareness. "WWJB?" wends its way across the country, following the antics of the Church of Stop Shopping, a gospel-flavored musical comedy troupe that aims to educate Americans about the over-commercialization of Christmas and related ills.

Buy Nothing Day is getting a Jesus jolt. Performance artist Bill Talen assumes the persona of the Rev. Billy, often accompanied by a gospel choir, to use the histrionics and cadences of a televangelist (think Jimmy Swaggart) in an anticonsumerism effort to convert people to his "Church of Stop Shopping." And for today's shopping frenzy, Talen is upping his profile with a colorful campaign promoting a new documentary film about his efforts, "What Would Jesus Buy?"

Walking Into the Night A Novel Olaf Olafsson Pantheon: 266 pp., $23 If you read Olaf Olafsson's last novel, "The Journey Home," you know you are in the hands of a writer who is a master puppeteer, violently pulling the strings of memory, desire and fate, even as the words flow calmly and sensuously from his pen. "Walking Into the Night" is the story of Christian Benediktsson, for 16 years the butler at San Simeon, William Randolph Hearst's estate.

When it comes to theater openings, Christmas week is traditionally the week that wasn't. Looking ahead to January, however, monologuist Bill Talen will open Jan. 4 at Cast-at-the-Circle with his newest work, "Cooking Harry," based on the character of Talen's uncle, claimed to be "King of the outdoor barbecue chefs" (he should get plenty of argument over that). Around that time too--Jan.

This holiday season, the man who took the joy out of eating a Big Mac is trying to put a damper on Christmas shopping. Morgan Spurlock, whose 2004 documentary, "Super Size Me," made America reconsider its devotion to McDonald's when it saw the results of his monthlong diet there, is returning to the big screen in the role of producer behind "What Would Jesus Buy?" The film, which opened in L.A. on Wednesday, follows the cross-country journey of the Rev.

Recently, actress and solo performer Susan Van Allen was embroiled in that hallowed ritual of actresses and solo performers everywhere--updating the resume. "All of a sudden, I paused," Van Allen recalls, talking by phone from her San Francisco home. "I looked over what I'd done. My God, I sure hadn't planned things this way." The latest entry on her resume lists "Jersey Girls," a solo portrait of a quintet of New Jersey females, written by Van Allen in collaboration with director David Ford.