Bitch! Dyke! Faghag! Whore! – Penny Arcade’s crusade against conformity

Bitch! Dyke! Faghag! Whore! - “erotic but unifying, dangerous yet welcoming”

“There are two kinds of performers,” testifies Penny Arcade to a room full of respectful admirers. “Those who want to be worshipped and adored and those who just want to be friends with everybody.”

Sometimes you can be both, as the American extrovert performer willingly demonstrates, bouncing around with an energy that belies her 60 years. “This is a show about telling the truth,” she professes.

On the Lower East Side of New York City, Penny Arcade is something of an underground performance icon. A long-term champion of sexuality and non-conformity, her provocative celebration of all things anti-establishment in Bitch!Dyke!Faghag!Whore! has long since caught the attention of an international audience. Combining her adopted comedic personas with monologues, burlesque dances and political satire, the show continues to evolve and excite, more than twenty years after it was first performed.

The ‘anything goes’ celebration of freedom that is central to Bitch!Dyke!Faghag!Whore! has kept Penny where she wants to be: firmly outside of the mainstream. She continues to thrive on the gasps of horror the show’s title receives in politically correct circles in America, and is excited by the idea that promoters and arts administrators whisper its name with fear.

Penny is credited with beginning an international gay burlesque movement, but this is an achievement she regards in a dim light. She claims to be uninterested in burlesque because it is ordered and pro forma, the antithesis of her show which is “a representation of the purest form of expression: erotic but unifying, dangerous yet welcoming.”

Heavily influenced by the 1980s minimalist scene, where the emphasis was placed on performance rather than theatre, Penny has worked with a wide range of stars from the infamous Andy Warhol to the gay icon Quentin Crisp. These experiences have formed her political identity.

She detests the exclusivity of clubs or groups and, despite her fervent embracing of diverse sexuality, rejects the Gay Pride movement. She believes the concept of a unified movement goes against the ideas of individual sexual freedom that resonate through her performances. Bitch!Dyke!Faghag!Whore! aims to explore the juxtaposition of conformity and individuality.

The same notions shape her idea of hipsters. Speaking of some sections of Shoreditch, she bemoans the lack of identity and originality, the desire for conformity to a particular group. “There are people who are hip, and there are hipsters,” she says. “Hipsters are not hip.”

Her excitement at bringing the show to London is tangible, and Penny delights in the idea that it will be performed in the Arcola Tent in Dalston, a community based theatre, which resonates powerfully with the environment where the play first started. There was originally large community support for the project after funding was temporarily banned in New York for “obscene or indecent art.”

Bitch!Dyke!Faghag!Whore! will run for almost four weeks at the Arcola Tent. It has been performed all over the world and Penny has never relented in expressing a triumphant stance against conformity, the establishment and censorship.

Ronald Reagan spoke of a “gay cancer” in the 1980s when referring to AIDS. Today, homophobia and opposition to gay marriage are rife throughout the world and these ongoing tensions in politics and society are part of the show’s durability and its continuing relevance and subversion in the face of conservatism.

To have this much enthusiasm at the age of 60 is impressive but Penny Arcade is not likely to retire any time soon, and her reasoning has to be admired. “From 20 to 27, nothing happens,” she says. “Then you’re old. You have these worries your whole life and then you hit 60.” She smiles wryly. “At sixty, life begins again.”

For Penny at least, it’s hard not to believe her.

Bitch! Dyke! Faghag! Whore!
Arcola Tent
Dalston
Wed 27 June to Sun 22 July
7.30pm (5pm Sundays)
Tickets £20 (£15 concs)