Penny Arcade Returns with Legendary Performance Art Piece

In 1990 Penny Arcade created the now legendary Bitch! Dyke! Faghag! Whore!, her sex and censorship show, in response to the Senator Helms/National Endowment For The Arts censorship crisis. Now it returns in an exclusive Spiegeltent season for the first time in over a decade on Tuesday, September 11 at 10 p.m.

"Originally conceived as a four-day audit for a NEA solo fellowship grant, Bitch! Dyke! Faghag! Whore! was a runaway success, fueled by what became known as The Drag Factor, as people returned repeatedly, dragging their friends, co-workers, neighbors and family to experience the show and its cathartic audience dance break. A call for the separation of church and state, the piece is a powerful critique of the Christian Right as well as of the politically correct Left. A blend of outrageous humor, political humanism, freedom of expression and erotic dancing, Bitch! Dyke! Faghag! Whore! shocked NY's supposedly unshakeable downtown art scene.  The phenomena continued in 22 cities internationally as the show left it's underground moorings after an unprecedented year long run at NY's Legendary Village Gate, becoming a runaway mainstream, international theatre hit," state press notes.

"Arcade's unusual ability to mediate through her personal relationship with the audience rather than simply through theatrical forms,  allowed her to make avant-garde theatrical presentation and content palatable to mainstream audiences and brought performance art to a new and greater acceptance with the general public," as stated in press notes.

Arcade made her theatre debut in Kenneth Bernard's The Moke Eater, directed by John Vaccaro. Soon after, Arcade became a teenage superstar for Andy Warhol's Factory with a featured role in the Morrissey/Warhol film Women In Revolt, but quickly found the life of an upcoming pop tart too one dimensional and fled to Amsterdam.  In 1980, La Mama's Ellen Stewert and Vaccaro invited her to recreate her 1970 New York role in Ken Bernard's play Nite Club. She returned to New York after nearly a decade of globe hopping and international intrigue to resume her apprenticeship with many of the greats of American experimental theatre including Jack Smith, Jackie Curtis and Charles Ludlam. In 1985 Arcade began creating her own improvisational and unscripted solo work. In 1989 she began to create group work, beginning with her commission from Engarde Arts for whom she created A Quiet Night for Sid and Nancy at the Chelsea Hotel.

1990-91 was a prolific period for Arcade during which she wrote four full length shows, including the core of her autobiographical trilogy; Based on A True Story, Invitation to The Beginning Of The End Of The World and La Miseria. It was also in 1990 that she created Bitch! Dyke! Faghag! Whore!, which toured the world twice both as an international festival as well as a commercial hit in 22 cities around the world. In the time since, she has seen Bad Reputation, her all girl show (with a few gay men who wanted their own dance number!) premiere in NYC at Performance Space 122 in March of 1999 and later in Manchester, England, and Glasgow Scotland. Her New York Values - an autopsy on the death of Bohemia and the commodification of rebellion - also had its premiere at PS 122 in spring of 2002 as a group show and has been performed as a solo show in Los Angeles, Austin, Frankfurt, Heldelberg and the Royal Festival Hall in London.  Since 1999, Arcade has spearheaded the award winning documentary series Stemming The Tide of Cultural Amnesia, The Lower Eastside Biography Project, an oral history and downtown performance project cum training program sponsored in part by Manhattan Neighborhood Network.

Tickets are $35. To book or for more information, visit www.spiegelworld.com or telephone Ticket Central:  212 279 4200. 

Photo by Linda Lenzi - Penny Arcade with Charles Busch

 

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