Penny Arcade Performance

Penny Arcade, aka Susana Ventura, is an international cultural icon, revered as a performer, poet, writer, and actress who speaks truth to power. Innovative, charismatic and magnetic, she has brought experimental theatre to mainstream audiences and influenced generations of artists around the world. She occupies a rare position in the American avant-garde, though her long association with the architects of the counter culture from Andy Warhol to John Vaccaro, Jack Smith, Judith Malina, Jonas Mekas, Charles Henri Ford, H.M. Koutoukas, Charles Ludlam and Tom O’Horgan.

Her text-based work, known for its high content humor and rich one-liners, has always focused on the other and the outsider, on individuality and authenticity. Her use of performance as a transformative act and community building as the goal of performance marks her as a true original on the world stage. Her work and her ideas have given her a mainstream presence far from America’s shores.

Since 1992 she has collaborated with former architect Steve Zehentner on dozens of shows and performances. Together they have redefined the role of space for the audience creating an inclusive, transformative and celebratory theater with over 900 performances in 80 cities around the world.

With Steve’s experience as a video producer, they co-helm The Lower East Side Biography Project, a video oral history project that has broadcast and live-streamed weekly in New York since 1999.

They seek support for a variety of projects but are primarily working on the development of a nine-episode live performance memoir series. The Art of Becoming. The first live episode, Superstar Interrupted: 1967-1973, was presented at Joe's Pub in 2022, at the Adelaide Fringe Festival in 2023 and again at Joe's Pub in 2024. That production integrated a new visual element: videos of Penny's 1960's performance work and archival photos of the cast of characters in the show. 

The next episode in the series, The Reluctant Recluse: 1974-1981, is being developed and is scheduled to be presented in late 2024.

 

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