Friday, May 18, 2018

Bitches, Dykes, Faghags, and Whores in a Sanctuary City


Scenes from Bikes against Deportation, above, and Bitches, Dykes, Faghags, and Whores below


Photo James Gavin.
Audience Dance Break!
Image result for bitches dykes faghags whores
Elliott Franks Photography


  © Theodoulos Polyviou
Dancers perform during 'Bitch!, Dyke!, Faghag!, Whore!' on the NYC Downlow stage at Lovebox.

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!”

Across from me a neon light blinked: “Bitch-dyke-faghag-whore.”

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…”
Lara B last night. Photo by Jackie Rudin


  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



      Tigger-James Ferguson



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.

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
·         May 11-12, 17-19
·         Doors/Drinks/Dancing at 7:30pm
·         Come early for go-go pre-show with New York’s sexiest erotic dancers.
·         Performance at 8pm


















































































































































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