Occupy Broadway: Protesters, Performers Creatively Resist At Times Square (LIVESTREAM)

Occupy Wall Street descended upon Broadway Friday night, commencing a daylong occupation of Times Square. The move to New York's theater district is meant to be a show of creative resistance, with a series of street performances and speeches that symbolize the people "taking back the stage" -- in other words, the public spaces that belong to them.

Occupy Broadway's statement lays out their objective:

Occupy Broadway is a symbolic attempt to regain the space of theatre as an accessible, popular art form, bringing it back to where it all started - in a public space, for the common citizen. We are using public space to create a more colorful image of what our streets could look like, with public performances, art, and music. Through this movement, New York re-imagines itself as a work of art, rather than a retail shopping mall.

Friday night's agenda began at 6 p.m., with a procession of protesters in theatrical hats and outfits playing trumpets and drums, and eventually winding their way to Paramount Plaza where activist/social worker, and HuffPost blogger, Benjamin Shepard took the mic:

Welcome police, occupiers, and fellow New Yorkers. You are all part of a show. Instead of sitting on the sidelines, regular people around the world are tearing up the seats and rushing the stage. And no one can tell the difference between spectators and participants. We are all the show -- you, me, us, now.

Reverend Billy then led a sermon and shared his experience watching Times Square transform into what it is today.

"I was protesting against sweatshops in front of the Disney store, and I saw the streets privatized," Billy said. "Times Square turned into a shopping mall."

Performances by the Foundry Theatre, the Bread and Puppet theater and others followed Shepard and Billy's statements. The program continues today until 6 p.m., with appearances by The Yes Men and Adam Rapp (see full schedule below).

Watch Shepard and BIlly speak, and check out a livestream of today's events below:

Watch live streaming video from occupynyc at livestream.com

Full schedule:

6pm Rude Mechanical Orchestra Meet at Duffy Square and lead to location

6pm-7pm carnival performers for opening ceremonies- Kate Brehm puff on stilts, magician, hoopers, Juggler unicyclist, clowns

6pm-7pm Ben Shepard MC Welcome, manifesto, First Amendment

6pm-7pm Reverend Billy sermon

ongoing from 7:00 PM WashMachine Productions

7:00 PM THE FOUNDRY THEATRE

7:15 PM The Civilians

7:30 PM The NY Labor Chorus

7:45 PM Penny Arcade

8:00 PM Dzieci

8:30 PM Five minute song interlude- Beau Borrero

8:35 PM Hungry March Band

9:00 PM HERE Arts Center/ Kristin Marting/ Jenny romaine MC

8-10 or 10-12 TBD short pieces Adam Ende Puppetry

9:30 PM Urban Research Theater company

9:30 PM tiana hemlock 7 min dance

9:50 PM Great Small Works

10:10 PM Jay stolar

10:30 PM The Living Theater

11:00 PM Bread and Puppet Theater/ Reno MC

11:30 PM jandthe9s

12:00 AM Mike Daisey

12:30 AM Kenny Wollesen’s Sonic Massage

1:00 AM Dramatic Karaoke

1:00 AM Descent Artists- Gravity

1:30 AM Jesse Ricke 5min, UZIMON 10min, Tent Peg Theater 20min

2:00 AM Corporate Scary ghost stories

3am-5am The People Staged

5am- sunrise Kim Fraczek and tango dancers at dawn

7:30 AM Consensus Dance Jazzercise

8:00 AM OWS Puppet Guild

8:30AM reed mcgowan puppets

9:00 AM Open mic/ peoples staged

9:30 AM General Assembly

10:00 AM Aaron Landsman from Elevator Repair Service

10:30 AM Project Girl performance

10:30 AM Antigone

11:00 AM Tony Torn Family Show!

11:30 AM Radical Faeries and Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence morning ritual

12:00 PM Music Working Group

1:00 PM Kathleen Chalfant and Elliot Crown

1:10 PM Marina Tsaplina solo

1:20 PM Elliot Crown – Occupy Clown show (w/Marina, Mike deSeve, Elliot)

1:30 PM Marionette -Cosmic Bicycle Theater

1:30 PM Lopi LeRoe’s student Debt performance piece

2:00 PM The Yes Men

2:20 PM THE TEAM

2:30 PM Iron Falcon

3:00 PM The Big Bank – A Musical

3:20 PM Adam Rapp one act and 10 min plays

4:00 PM Heelz on wheelz

4:15 PM April Yvette Thompson, Jessica Blank

4:30 PM Carlo Alban/Spanish songs-juggling

5:00 PM Judith Sloan, Yo Miss!

5:20 PM Yolanda Kay, Neo-Futurists

5:40 PM grand finale!Rocha dance/ Church of Stop Shopping sing the First Amendment

6:00PM END!

 

Comments

[LegallyBlondeNYC]

10:48 PM on 12/04/2011

Mike Daisy's recent performance at the Public about Apple/Jobs is a briliant work.

[GirlInNYC]

08:49 PM on 12/04/2011

That is creative. It's one day and on a Friday when people tend to be happier. Um, well I am :)

[Karma2U]

01:06 PM on 12/04/2011

Applause and a standing ovation. Without the arts - there would be no color in the world.

[Bryan --]

11:46 AM on 12/04/2011

The sideshow continues...

[paid trawler]

02:01 PM on 12/04/2011

what are you and the other pretend 1% so afraid of?

[Bryan --]

12:08 AM on 12/05/2011

1 percent.. Lol?. My wife and I are both professionals in NYC..
You make me laugh.
We ave a 2br and house in the Hamptons but are far from the Kochs.
U hate us?
Actually, I laugh at you..
And could kick your a..
Bye

[Humanitari Leandro]

11:10 AM on 12/04/2011

Brilliant! love Occupy Bdway!

[Alette]

09:59 AM on 12/04/2011

What's hysterical is seeing all of these theater people who have been charging obscene amounts of money for over a decade now, pretending to be concerned with capitalism. Most of these 'artists' have been shilling to corporate America for years now and I bet any of them would step away from their protest for a TV deal. Kristin Marting at HERE is particularly guilty of turning her theater into a corporate shill zone by stenciling the names of all of her corporate donors all over every inch of wall space at the theater..

Bertolucci's "The Conformist" has never been more relevant.

[Holly Smoke]

09:38 AM on 12/04/2011

Bravo !!! Bravo !!!
Let us put on a show the compete with the ROSE BOWL PARADE.
I prefer real people ANY TIME.....

[TerrenceT]

07:27 PM on 12/04/2011

What's wrong with the Rose Bowl Parade and why aren't the people participating in it 'real'? Because you think so?

[KaAp]

08:28 AM on 12/04/2011

Oh how I love Rev Billy. And, thank you Broadway performers for joining with the 99 percent in an amazing creative display of public disobedience.

[TerrenceT]

03:28 AM on 12/04/2011

Seriously? Times Square has always been full of people acting, creating, demostrating and protesting. I guess the Occupiers never took time to pay a visit.

[bridgeman]

12:34 AM on 12/04/2011

where is the money going?

[RespectMyAuthoritah]

11:18 PM on 12/03/2011

To anyone who questions the symbol they adopted:

The swastika is used by Hindu as a means of peace and promotes their religion, where as, the swastika for _Nazis is well-known throughout history.

It's not what symbol they adopted, it's what the symbol stands for, for the people who adopted it. A raised fist in the air can be a communist logo, or simply "fight the power" like the Black Panthers used to do.

But, of course, I wouldn't expect any of you to understand that. You're only interested in using childish insults.

[TerrenceT]

03:36 AM on 12/04/2011

Try explaining that to my voting 78 year old grandma, an American child during the height of Nazi Germany, that the swastika means things other than Nazi domination. The fist in the air is also a very negative symbol for people preaching peace, unity and American values.

I hope you do not find any "chlidish insults" in my comments.

[Crimmies810]

11:24 AM on 12/04/2011

And the Confederate flag isn't insulting to black people, huh?

[Tara Hunkoff]

10:49 PM on 12/03/2011

Broadway?

It's "Death of Hippie" all over again, but this time no one has the money for a coffin.

[Humanitari Leandro]

11:11 AM on 12/04/2011

The movement grows with the middle class by 10% weekly! get your facts right, the hippie BS is not working

[Tara Hunkoff]

01:23 PM on 12/04/2011

I was expressing an opinion, not a fact, about the minimal effect of the Broadway crowd's opinions on the rest of the country, which does not live in New York City and cares little about musicals in general and Broadway in particular.

In that limited sense it reminded me of the effect of the September 1967 "Death of Hippie" ceremony in San Fancisco wherein some self-appointed leaders proclaimed that the Hippie Movement was dead. What they really didn't like was that San Francisco was no longer the Hippie Epicenter. Hippie ideas left them behind, and the hippie ethos survives to this day without all the stupid pop culture nonsense. I view that as a positive thing.

Broadway's endorsement - like the Sa Francisco "leaders" opinions in 1967 - will be met with indifference. I turn now to your math.

Assuming "the movement" enjoyed the support of 10% of the middle class to begin with, and assuming that support increased at the 10% per week rate you cite, the entire middle class would support it within 26 weeks.

Obviously that will not happen, since no political movement has ever entirely captured the middle class, so the real question is simple: When will the OWS Movement stop growing in the middle class? I suspect it will be somewhere around the 25% mark, but that's just my opinion.

[rdk70816]

10:11 PM on 12/03/2011

What is that raised and clinched fist stuff? Is that not communist symbology?

[FlyboyDave]

03:24 AM on 12/04/2011

Ouch. Figuratively speaking.

Wait, no, I guess that would be literally speaking.

[RationalityPlease]

11:30 PM on 12/03/2011

While many historical revisionists (like the one below) claim it first appeared among the communists who were fighting the fascists in the Spanish civil war, it was employed in a variety of ways at least a millenium or two before that war.

In more recent times, it has been used by various labor movements, anti-colonialist freedom fighters, and we also used it in the Civil Rights movement and the Feminist Movement. It's also been rather popular among sports figures.

Two common threads of its meanings have been: solidarity and resistance to abuse of power.

[rdk70816]

10:28 AM on 12/04/2011

So its history is that of violent objection?

[Bishop Coxcomb]

09:38 PM on 12/03/2011

Occupy my house.

[PollyTics]

09:34 PM on 12/03/2011

GREAT Logo!