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Bad Reputation: Performances, Essays, Interviews (Semiotext
An autobiographical trilogy by a cultural icon of Downtown New York. A reform-school runaway at thirteen, a performer in the legendary New York City Playhouse of the Ridiculous at seventeen, and an escapee from Andy Warhol's Factory scene at nineteen, Penny Arcade (born Susanna Ventura) emerged in the 1980s as a primal force on the New York art scene and an originator of what came to be called performance art. Arcade's brand of high camp and street-smart, punk-rock cabaret showmanship has been winning over international audiences ever since. This autobiographical trilogy of plays represents her at her best. Bitch! Dyke! Faghag! Whore! is Penny Arcade's raucous, cutting-edge sex and censorship show, (which continues to be a commercial hit around the world), featuring the daily life of a receptionist in a brothel, the upbringing and rearing of a “faghag,” the evolution of the New York gay scene in the 1990s, and a participatory “audience dance break.” The funny and heart-rending title work, Bad Reputation , portrays a young teen runaway's coming of age in a Catholic reform school (run by nuns who are former fashion models) and her subsequent life on the streets of 1960s New York. La Miseria, a rare depiction of working-class Italian-Americans from a woman's point of view that portrays the clash between working-class morals and compassion during the 1980s AIDS epidemic, rounds out the trilogy. Bad Reputation is the first book by and on Penny Arcade. The complete scripts are accompanied by a new interview with Penny Arcade by Chris Kraus, a range of archival photographs of the East Village scene and Arcade's performances, an introduction by playwright Ken Bernard, and contributions by Sarah Schulman, Steve Zehentner, and Stephen Bottoms.
- GenresNonfictionMemoir
196 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2009
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
October 16, 2009
I cannot believe I didn't know who Penny Arcade was. Oriana! Do you know who this person is? She's kind of like a downtown art star like Reverend Jen, but less charmingly weird and more aggressively wounded. I don't know shit about performance art, but if other performance art is anything like these pieces, I feel pissed that I wasn't learning about it when I lived in New York.
This thing happened where a magazine- Art XX- invited me to do reviews for them, like in their print magazine, so the first thing I did the next day was to e-mail Semiotext(e), Soft Skull, Alyson and Cleis like 'I'm a professional now! Please send me awesome books I don't have to pay for!" And they did, so now I just get to read stuff like this and talk about it. I don't know if I get paid but I don't think so. Anyway, ha! I got to read this before everyone else.
So I don't know whether to just reprint what I'm going to write in the magazine, or talk a bunch of shit here now, or what. I think I'll probably just post magazine reviews here for you to read, right? Unless one of the magazine people gets pissed about it. There's a blog, too, I think.
Anyway, um, I wish that Penny Arcade had been my mentor when I lived in New York. She would have been like, 'No, that's a stupid thing to think.' And 'Yes, I dare you.' Then I would have grown up way cooler than I am now, y'know?
*shrug*
I'll append the real review to this review when it's written.
This thing happened where a magazine- Art XX- invited me to do reviews for them, like in their print magazine, so the first thing I did the next day was to e-mail Semiotext(e), Soft Skull, Alyson and Cleis like 'I'm a professional now! Please send me awesome books I don't have to pay for!" And they did, so now I just get to read stuff like this and talk about it. I don't know if I get paid but I don't think so. Anyway, ha! I got to read this before everyone else.
So I don't know whether to just reprint what I'm going to write in the magazine, or talk a bunch of shit here now, or what. I think I'll probably just post magazine reviews here for you to read, right? Unless one of the magazine people gets pissed about it. There's a blog, too, I think.
Anyway, um, I wish that Penny Arcade had been my mentor when I lived in New York. She would have been like, 'No, that's a stupid thing to think.' And 'Yes, I dare you.' Then I would have grown up way cooler than I am now, y'know?
*shrug*
I'll append the real review to this review when it's written.
January 1, 2022
"Bad Reputation: Performances, Essays, Interviews" is a compilation of Penny Arcade's plays and work in the avant-garde bohemian LES in New York City. She was born into an Italian American family with the birth name Susana Ventura.
The script of three plays are in full: "La Miseria," "Bitch! Dyke! Faghag! Whore!," and "Bad Rep"
"La Miseria" has an introduction by Sarah Schulman, that says, "She used Performance Art to enable truth-telling about the individual in a social context of American Naturalism, without the phony kitchen-sink pretense of recreating reality. In this way Penny shared what individuals were thinking and feeling inside an honestly acknowledged material/social world, without pretending to recreate it, which always leads to a watering down of the real experience. The flaw of Realism is that it makes suffering more palatable by containing it within an illusion of accuracy. When Penny brought together Realism and Performance Art she enhanced the emotional communication without eliminating politics.” And the play got, "ugly really quickly and became about racism. This is when I was riveted. I had never seen a white artist show true racism in a way that did not distance the artist from the act. To this day when whites show racism, or produce or present depictions of racism, they usually create white characters who are distinctly different from themselves.”
Most of her work was performed in the early 90s which explains why I didn't see her plays, I had already moved to Seattle. Reading this I wish I had seen her plays! At the same time, I feel that I know her work. It had similarities with Spaulding Grey and Karen Finley, both of these I experienced. In the final essay by Steve Zehentner, he writes these artists: "relied on presence, charisma and provocation (both verbal and in some cases, visual) to capture spectatorial attention. Most of them also used autobiographical narrative, more or less explicitly, to enhance a sense of the performance’s liveliness: this person is living out her life right in front of us, and these are the details of that life. Penny Arcade, a.k.a. Susana Ventura, is one of the single most accomplished exponents of such monologue-driven performance to have emerged from this time and place:...”
In the opening, and only, interview with Chris Kraus (live, June 28, 2008) that starts the book Penny says: “As Jack Smith said, “You have to make the story up for yourself.” And I thought, wow, for me, there’s so much in the world, you know…fiction is such a luxury, when there’s so much nonfiction to be dealt with. And that’s kind of where I made my place. Yet I used elements of performance art because I wanted it, you know. I wanted to give something back for being allowed to participate.”
From the last essay by Steve Zehentner; "…Arcade explicitly targets the Village Voice as having betrayed the progressive values on which it was founded. “Our typical reader,” she quotes its editor as saying, “is a 32-year-old computer executive with a vaguely bohemian drift.” It’s a line that neatly accounts fo the attitudes apparent in Soloski’s review, but it’s just one element in the show’s multifaceted critique of the ways in which capitalistic notions of “success” and “failure” have superimposed a process of bourgeois gentrification over the “footprint” of downtown Manhattan’s older, bohemian art world.”
When he first met her this was her intro, “You don’t know the ground you’re standing on,” she said. “The whole Lower East Side used to be a landing pad for aliens; the illegal, the immoral, the born losers, it was a mecca for the Misfit. It had everything except control freaks. Have you seen the avant-garde lately? Who are those young Republicans with purple hair?”
She was generous and brave to put her life on the stage. I'm glad this book was organized to acknowledge her work and give us more of her voice, it's important.
The script of three plays are in full: "La Miseria," "Bitch! Dyke! Faghag! Whore!," and "Bad Rep"
"La Miseria" has an introduction by Sarah Schulman, that says, "She used Performance Art to enable truth-telling about the individual in a social context of American Naturalism, without the phony kitchen-sink pretense of recreating reality. In this way Penny shared what individuals were thinking and feeling inside an honestly acknowledged material/social world, without pretending to recreate it, which always leads to a watering down of the real experience. The flaw of Realism is that it makes suffering more palatable by containing it within an illusion of accuracy. When Penny brought together Realism and Performance Art she enhanced the emotional communication without eliminating politics.” And the play got, "ugly really quickly and became about racism. This is when I was riveted. I had never seen a white artist show true racism in a way that did not distance the artist from the act. To this day when whites show racism, or produce or present depictions of racism, they usually create white characters who are distinctly different from themselves.”
Most of her work was performed in the early 90s which explains why I didn't see her plays, I had already moved to Seattle. Reading this I wish I had seen her plays! At the same time, I feel that I know her work. It had similarities with Spaulding Grey and Karen Finley, both of these I experienced. In the final essay by Steve Zehentner, he writes these artists: "relied on presence, charisma and provocation (both verbal and in some cases, visual) to capture spectatorial attention. Most of them also used autobiographical narrative, more or less explicitly, to enhance a sense of the performance’s liveliness: this person is living out her life right in front of us, and these are the details of that life. Penny Arcade, a.k.a. Susana Ventura, is one of the single most accomplished exponents of such monologue-driven performance to have emerged from this time and place:...”
In the opening, and only, interview with Chris Kraus (live, June 28, 2008) that starts the book Penny says: “As Jack Smith said, “You have to make the story up for yourself.” And I thought, wow, for me, there’s so much in the world, you know…fiction is such a luxury, when there’s so much nonfiction to be dealt with. And that’s kind of where I made my place. Yet I used elements of performance art because I wanted it, you know. I wanted to give something back for being allowed to participate.”
From the last essay by Steve Zehentner; "…Arcade explicitly targets the Village Voice as having betrayed the progressive values on which it was founded. “Our typical reader,” she quotes its editor as saying, “is a 32-year-old computer executive with a vaguely bohemian drift.” It’s a line that neatly accounts fo the attitudes apparent in Soloski’s review, but it’s just one element in the show’s multifaceted critique of the ways in which capitalistic notions of “success” and “failure” have superimposed a process of bourgeois gentrification over the “footprint” of downtown Manhattan’s older, bohemian art world.”
When he first met her this was her intro, “You don’t know the ground you’re standing on,” she said. “The whole Lower East Side used to be a landing pad for aliens; the illegal, the immoral, the born losers, it was a mecca for the Misfit. It had everything except control freaks. Have you seen the avant-garde lately? Who are those young Republicans with purple hair?”
She was generous and brave to put her life on the stage. I'm glad this book was organized to acknowledge her work and give us more of her voice, it's important.
September 3, 2021
This is a strange one. Parts I really enjoyed and appreciated, and parts I found super tedious and annoyingly preachy, even if I can see where they were coming from. Rated 3 stars accordingly. Overall, an interesting piece of NY theatre/art history to learn about.
August 30, 2012
Author and performer Penny Arcade: Queen of the downtown art scene. The book is a series of performances, essays, and interviews. Penny was a huge part of the Andy Warhol Factory scene. She originated 'Performance Art." And then... She mastered it.
She is a bit like an alternative therapist, and an avant garde sociologist... but with a truly unique wit, and a somewhat caustic sense of humour. Anyway, no matter what she is doing, it is never boring!
Her work boils down to one, simple, important message - Get over all the crap, love yourself, and love others - but she enhances this message with gyrating go-go dancers, and a lesson in the history of Queer society, including her personal experience of living through the AIDS crisis.
She is not an easy personality or artist to explain, but she IS one of the most interesting people working in theatre today.
If you are an actor looking for a unique monologue, this IS your book. If you like memoir, this IS your book.
If you love empowered, unique, witty women who have effected major changes in history, this IS your book. If you like the downtown NYC art scene, during the 60's, and the 70's, this IS your book. If you have ever been in a relationship with someone with an intimacy problem, if you care about the insanity of the right wing Christian movement and national and international politics, if you have members of your family who just don't 'get you' no matter how hard you try and communicate with them, if you survived the AIDS epidemic, if you have SEX... THIS IS YOUR BOOK.
If you believe in love, this is your book.
And you can see me, on pages 28 and 30, in the book, because I had to honour of being an original touring cast member of her hit show Bitch! Dyke! Faghag! Whore! about 20 years ago... ;-)
She is a bit like an alternative therapist, and an avant garde sociologist... but with a truly unique wit, and a somewhat caustic sense of humour. Anyway, no matter what she is doing, it is never boring!
Her work boils down to one, simple, important message - Get over all the crap, love yourself, and love others - but she enhances this message with gyrating go-go dancers, and a lesson in the history of Queer society, including her personal experience of living through the AIDS crisis.
She is not an easy personality or artist to explain, but she IS one of the most interesting people working in theatre today.
If you are an actor looking for a unique monologue, this IS your book. If you like memoir, this IS your book.
If you love empowered, unique, witty women who have effected major changes in history, this IS your book. If you like the downtown NYC art scene, during the 60's, and the 70's, this IS your book. If you have ever been in a relationship with someone with an intimacy problem, if you care about the insanity of the right wing Christian movement and national and international politics, if you have members of your family who just don't 'get you' no matter how hard you try and communicate with them, if you survived the AIDS epidemic, if you have SEX... THIS IS YOUR BOOK.
If you believe in love, this is your book.
And you can see me, on pages 28 and 30, in the book, because I had to honour of being an original touring cast member of her hit show Bitch! Dyke! Faghag! Whore! about 20 years ago... ;-)
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews