Event
OLD QUEEN by Penny Arcade
"I am nothing if not the dutiful daughter of New York's criminal, psychedelic, intellectual, homosexual avant garde." - Penny Arcade
Old Queen. The two most dreaded words in gay male culture! But was it always this way? "Not so," says Penny Arcade who, as a teenager, knocked around in gay bars from Hartford, Connecticut, Providence, Rhode Island, Boston, and Provincetown and finally at 16 washed up on the shores of Greenwich Village and the Lower East Side. She sought refuge and enlightenment in the gay bars and gay coffee shops from the early 1960's, the fomenting place of modern culture where the ridiculous met the sublime, where criminality forged with intellectual innovation, where low art met high art, and where the outsider status of homosexuality was a breeding ground for unique world views. Presiding over these palaces of the synthesis of culture were the old queens.
Says Arcade, "When I was 14, 15, 16... my goal every night was to get to sit at the table with the old queens. A difficult invitation to get for a teenage girl. But the old queens knew everything I wanted to know for them conversation was more than an art, it was an existential nectar that gave form to the power of the word. The old queens knew everything about life and travel, the human condition about the world, this one and others and I craved their company. They did not tolerate banality and theirs was a fierce and unapologetic intelligence and wit. Just sitting at a table of old queens in a dark bar or fluorescent coffee shop, lifted your IQ twenty points! Unbeknownst to me, I was on a trajectory to be an old queen. And I am finally an old queen... in a world that has no understanding of the value of old queens."
As the host and producer of the long-running "Lower East Side Biography Project" and the feature-length "Stemming the Tide of Cultural Amnesia", with long time collaborator Steve Zehentner Arcade has a demonstrated commitment to preserving the rich cultural and intellectual history of the off the radar NY downtown and the East Village and Lower East Side. For the first time in her theater work she revisits these neighborhoods from the perspective of the teenage, runaway Susanna Ventura.
Arcade's theatrical memoir evokes the magic and memory of the gay men who raised her: from little known figures like Jamie Andrews, the gay man who took her in off the streets, gave her a place to live,and took her from performing on the streets to the stages of The Playhouse Of The Ridiculous. Jackie Curtis Bobby Beers, Ritta Redd, Herbert Hunke, Joel Markman, to seminal figures like John Vacarro, Charles Henri Ford,HM Koutoukas, Jack Smith, and Andy Warhol. "Old Queen" is latest offering from a veteran playwright and performance artist at the peak of her powers. Expect Arcade's signature blend of spot-on impersonations, trenchant wit, and theatrical political humanism. It's an intoxicating combination you won't want to miss!
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LocationThe Marsh
1062 Valencia St.
San Francisco, CA 94110
United States
Categories
| Kid Friendly: No |
| Dog Friendly: No |
| Non-Smoking: No |
| Wheelchair Accessible: No |
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