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| Scenes from Bikes against Deportation, above, and Bitches, Dykes, Faghags, and Whores below |
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Photo James Gavin.
Audience Dance Break!
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Elliott Franks Photography |
© Theodoulos Polyviou
Dancers perform during 'Bitch!, Dyke!, Faghag!, Whore!' on the NYC Downlow stage at Lovebox.
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| That’s Juan, Lara, and the blonde is Terra!, Lara's agent. |
Sitting
down at the Performance Space New York on First Avenue, I felt a rush flow
through me.
“Enjoy the show,” a man greeted me.
“No pictures,” noted one of the women at the door.
Sitting down, I glanced around at the room full of go
go dancers and my friends and heros from downtown NYC, Jack and Peter, there
was Peter, from ACT UP, and Jackie, from Rise and Resist, taking pictures. She wrote:
“Had to go back to see Penny Arcade and Steve Zehentner again tonight at Performance Space New York cause with Penny once is never enough. It's like
going to church - you keep going back because you
feel alive and renewed! This revival of Penny Arcade: Bitch! Dyke! Faghag! Whore! about
sex and censorship, which has been knocking audiences off their ass since 1990,
also has the most exquisite exotic dancers on earth, including Kevin Aviance! Plus there is an audience
dance break (!) thanks to the brilliance of Steve Zehentner. The very idea of a dance
break highlights the liberating and communal bonding of this show. Everyone in
the room falls in love with each other and every performer on the stage.
Besides the genius of Penny Arcade's ideas and words, that is the
magic of this show. Miss this and you will miss the most seminal work in
Downtown Theater history. Only 2 more shows! Fri and Sat -May 18th 19th. The
"must see" of the season! Be there for the Erotic Pre Show and
Bar! Arrive at 7 pm!”
I have always loved Penny Arcade. She made my dad laugh when we went to see her
shows years ago. “Unemployed people get
more sex,” she insisted. “Really,” Dad
laughed. “I wish I had known that when I
was young.”
Penny was there when we occupied Broadway for 24 hours
and was
there for Judith Malina’s last shows of the living theater. And she seemed to channel that feeling.
Several of us in the crowd had just gotten done with the
Rev Billy critical mass against monthly bikes against deportations ride, taking
place on the third Thursdays of the last few months at Varick Street…where we… “slow down the
ICE vans, show NYC what sanctuary means, Immigrants are under attack. We ride
for one hour. We Ride for Freedom…”
Arriving, Billy and I chatted. He
gave me the names of people who have been deported so we could should their
names.
Savitri gave me a flyer noting “ICE operates
here.. every day your fellow New Yorkers are detained and deported from this
building…In a single week in April more than 200 people were picked up and
processed through the Varick Street facility.”
Billy stood in front of the loading
dock where the vans to and from, blocking the doors where the they take
immigrants away. And pulled up the micro declaring:
We home the statue of liberty here. This is our culture. Our city, Billy preached,
reminding us that this is the home of the New Colossus, where Emma Lazarus’ words
define us.
We rode. Cycling advocates joined us from Transportation Alternatives. Ravi took the mike and talked about feeling
locked up inside that building, his kids seeing him chained up inside. Juan Carlos talked about ending ICE.
Savitri lead the cheers and a roving
critical mass swirled again. For years, it invited thousands of us into a conversation
about public space and democracy. And it was doing so again.
This is Billy’s Patterson moment as
he tells a story about what we can be in this city, if we put down our phones
and talk to each other, really talk to each other, really build community together,
really look out for each other, really defend each other, even in the midst of
the everyday encroachment of big box stores, real estate, and the sea of identical
details, erasing difference. Do you
still love the city, he asked. Three our
of seven days a week, I thought to myself.
Some days I love it. But its also
broken my heart. But there are moments when the theater of our bodies lives and
reminds me of something better, something more colorful and compelling.
Finishing, I rode through the cars, past
the graffiti lined streets, of bodies, people on the streets, the flow of all
of us swirling downtown and through the city.
“Confluence
is a favorite word of mine,” wrote Caroline earlier in the week. Riding I thought about her point. “I love the way it sounds. I love the image of
bodies of water coming together to become something bigger, both metaphorically
and literally. I am thinking about confluence today, as
we all need to make sense of this loss.”
We ate dumplings at 169 Bar and talked
about naked bike rides and organizing and ideas and movies and stories, as our
roving communities of friends ebbed in and out.
And I ride back up to First Ave
through the East Village streets.
Looking at Penny and the dancers on
stage, we were all whooping it up.
The familiar lyrics of the Kinks started
to fill the room.
“I met her in a club down in North Soho
Where you drink champagne and it tastes just like cherry cola
C-O-L-A cola
She walked up to me and she asked me to dance
I asked her name and in a dark brown voice she said, "Lola"”
All of a sudden, the sound cracked. Nothing.
Boo, the crowd screamed. This is the best part.
But it was only quiet for a second before
everyone started singing.
The dancers kept dancing, Lara, Penny’s assistant kept
on twerking.
“…L-O-L-A Lola, lo lo lo lo Lola
Well, I'm not the world's most physical guy
But when she squeezed me tight she nearly broke my spine
Oh my Lola, lo lo lo lo Lola
Well, I'm not dumb but I can't understand
Why she walk like a woman and talk like a man
Oh my Lola, lo lo lo lo Lola, lo lo lo lo Lola
Well, we drank champagne and danced all night
Under electric candlelight
She picked me up and sat me on her knee
And said, "Little boy won't you come home with me?"
Well, I'm not the world's most passionate guy
But when I looked in her eyes
Well, I almost fell for my Lola
Lo lo lo lo Lola, lo lo lo lo Lola…”
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| Lara B last night. Photo by Jackie Rudin |
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Then and now, Lara B Sharp writes: Penny Arcade, original dance troupe... also know as, (by ME, only), the Original 'Penny Arcade Superstars'.
(Because Penny is often referred to as an Original 'Andy Warhol Superstar', and because I think I'm funny.)
James, Me, Lita, and Kenny.
Dublin, Ireland, Olympia Theatre: Early 1990s. — with Tigger-James Ferguson.
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With Kenny, Penny Arcade, Lara B. Sharp and Leta.
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We sang away, the living theater of
the room pulling us all into the show.
Lara, Penny’s PA, danced away up
front, disparaging words about the president written on her derriere in hot
pink. She was part of the original BDFH run
of the show in 1990. Today, she is dance
captain for the show and is writing a memoir about her demented childhood, in
an out of foster care, and its funny, she explains.
Penny Arcade welcomed everyone and
began the show, taking us through her raucous tour of NYC cultural history,
reminding us to ask as many questions, laugh, have sex, speak out, and fight
aids and as much censorship as we can.
We need a new language, she declared, naked, inviting us all onto the
stage, where we all shook it and survived. I looked up and Peter Staley was
dancing with me. Peter was filming. I was at the Billy show, noted a man to my
left. Jackie was snapping photos.
“When you
are queer you learn to break some rules,” she wrote the next day. “I didn't
take any the first time I saw the show and most importantly I did not take any
during the surprise ending.
And for a night, this sanctuary city,
this city of Lady Liberty and Emma Lazarous, felt bawdy and alive, asking questions,
reminding us that sex workers rights are human rights. That ee are all immigrants
here.
Immigrants are welcome here. This is
a sanctuary city. This city of Bitch!
Dyke! Faghag! Whore!
Thank you Billy and Savitri and Jackie
and Lara and Penny.
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| Penny in action. Photos by Jackie Rudin |
Penny Arcade is the undisputed queen
of downtown performance, and Bitch! Dyke! Faghag! Whore! is
her biggest hit. A freedom of speech rallying cry, the raucous sex and
censorship show premiered at Performance Space 122 in 1990 during the height of
the culture wars, when ultra-conservative politicians pressured the National
Endowment for the Arts into defunding artists who made work that was considered
“offensive to the average person.” Deeply invested in the political role of
art, Arcade sees a need to reassess the subject matter of censorship
now—especially the “self-censorship coming from the left in the form of
political correctness in today’s culture.”
Information
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May 11-12, 17-19
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Doors/Drinks/Dancing at 7:30pm
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Come early for go-go
pre-show with New York’s sexiest erotic dancers.
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Performance at 8pm
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