Stoney Burke

Stoney Burke (January 17, 1953 - ) is a California street performer and actor.

He was born January 17, 1953 in Highland, Michigan, to a home he describes as "unstable." He was adopted at the age of 3 and grew up north of Detroit with parents who were active in the civil rights movement. He took the name "Stoney" from a short-lived TV western with Jack Lord.

In 1975, Burke moved to Eugene, Oregon and enrolled as a dance and theater major at the University of Oregon. He moved to the San Francisco Bay area in 1977 to study mime with Leonard Pitt, and soon began performing and commenting on current events. He claims to have "been hassled or arrested so many times practicing my free speech, I would bore you with the truth of it all."

Burke performs political comedy on college campuses, most notably at the University of California, Berkeley near Sather Gate. Burke routinely engages crowds throughout the day using conservative Republican perspectives as his primary satire subject matter. Burke hosts a TV show called "Stoney Speaks" on public-access television cable TV. Burke was featured in a Swedish documentary called "An American in America". He played a soup kitchen server in the movie "Bartleby" (2001) and played a truck driver in the movie "Matrix Reloaded" (2003). He had a major role playing Lockheed Martin in Craig Baldwin's "Mock Up on Mu".

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors in November, 2006, passed a resolution that declared November 14, 2007 "Stoney, A Clown Who Rabble Rouses In Defense of Free Speech, Day".

The University of California, Berkeley sailing team hosts an annual college sailing regatta named in Burke's honor.

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