(If you wish to learn more about Penny Arcade, click here to be directly linked to her website.)
“WOW!”—that was the primary thought I had as I walked out of the studio room at the Baruch Performing Arts Center after engaging in a brutally honest, opinionated discussion with playwright and performance artist Penny Arcade. Renowned for her internationally toured show Bitch! Dyke! Faghag! Whore!, Penny Arcade is an American playwright known for her experimental theater work, for her controversial remarks about politics and sexuality, and for her strong emphasis on community culture. Her contentious opinions include the adverse effects of gentrification, excessive political correctness, safe spaces and the infantilization of college students, and many other heated topics that have been debated in American society and culture for the past few decades.
I never heard of Penny Arcade and her work before besides a short video of B!D!F!W! the class needed to watch before attending her discussion workshop on October 30th. I was expecting the workshop to be about her career story, the elements of playwrighting and theater, and essential tips and advice for success; I couldn’t have been more wrong. A majority of the hour-long workshop consisted of Penny Arcade asserting her opinions and beliefs about gentrification, corporate capitalism’s threat to genuine diversity, and how young individuals are restricting freedom of speech for individuals with different opinions, by paying excessive amounts of money for brand-name products, and by taking less risk and becoming more anti-social. Her remarks related primarily to the socioeconomic conditions in New York City, but also in the United States at large. Penny Arcade stressed all of these points because she wanted to highlight the essence and material of her work, and how the material makes her, as her website states, “an international icon of artistic resistance.” When Penny Arcade presents her plays, she makes it a point to hire real strippers to perform in the plays to add additional shock value and highlight how people have become so disgusted and essentially shun such behavior even though “sexual energy,” as Penny Arcade states, is the primary energy all humans have that consciously and subconsciously drive our impulses and decisions.
One commonality among my classmates is either they didn’t understand the purpose of the workshop, or they disagreed with some or most of the opinions and comments expressed by Penny Arcade. I find it understandable as to why many of the students may not agree with Penny Arcade because her comments may sound like to some people that she is merely an old woman full of nostalgia and longing for the past. Other students may disagree with her views outright due to everyone’s unique education, experiences, and cultures that influence our beliefs. I didn’t agree with every single opinion Penny Arcade expressed, but a find myself nodding in agreement with a majority of the statements she made. I agree with her that corporate capitalism, while I do strongly favor it, has reduced some diverse aspects of New York City. Penny Arcade cited for example how underground strip clubs, diverse food joints, and large communities like Chinatown and Little Italy have lost their genuine culture and are now plagued with artificial stores and merchandise banking off of tourism. Penny Arcade also made an insightful point about how college students used to actively advocate to fight censorship of speakers and authors to hear new, challenging ideas. Today, unfortunately, you have students who staunchly oppose speakers, like Bill Maher and Steve Bannon, coming to campuses to speak or to have their books sold because the speakers are deemed offensive or too radical. Older individuals tend to state the younger generations have become too apathetic. While in some ways this may be true, in other ways we have become hypersensitive to where we need safe spaces to express our opinions, but these spaces hypocritically shun anyone who expresses a view polarly different to the view of the majority. When analyzed from these perspectives, New York City and America are threatened by the deterioration of our initial values and exceptionalism that distinguish us from other countries.
Penny Arcade demonstrates how American society, while it touts the progressive advancements that have made over the past two centuries, has more or less continued to marginalize particular groups and become set on enforcing multiculturalism too rapidly on people. To once again clarify, while I don’t entirely agree with the views Penny Arcade expresses, I do see and understand the points she raises, and I believe she is partially correct on some of these issues. By injecting experimental performance art into society, these views and issues can make people more aware, and encourage them to oppose and change the behavior we currently engage in. Penny Arcade, although controversial, is a master at getting people involved in discussions about threatening social and cultural issues.
—Patrick Perrigo
