Bitch! Dyke! Faghag! Whore!
Encyclopedia
Penny Arcade (performer)
Susana Ventura , better known by her stage name Penny Arcade, is an American performance artist, actress, and playwright based in New York City.-Career:...
. Like many of her shows, it combines erotic dancing
Erotic dancing
Erotic dance is a major category or classification of dance forms or dance styles, where the purpose is the stimulation or arousal of erotic or sexual thoughts or actions....
, improvisation
Improvisation
Improvisation is the practice of acting, singing, talking and reacting, of making and creating, in the moment and in response to the stimulus of one's immediate environment and inner feelings. This can result in the invention of new thought patterns, new practices, new structures or symbols, and/or...
, comedy
Comedy
Comedy , as a popular meaning, is any humorous discourse or work generally intended to amuse by creating laughter, especially in television, film, and stand-up comedy. This must be carefully distinguished from its academic definition, namely the comic theatre, whose Western origins are found in...
, audience participation, and monologue
Monologue
In theatre, a monologue is a speech presented by a single character, most often to express their thoughts aloud, though sometimes also to directly address another character or the audience. Monologues are common across the range of dramatic media...
. Themes include AIDS
AIDS
Acquired immune deficiency syndrome or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is a disease of the human immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus...
, pornography
Pornography
Pornography or porn is the explicit portrayal of sexual subject matter for the purposes of sexual arousal and erotic satisfaction.Pornography may use any of a variety of media, ranging from books, magazines, postcards, photos, sculpture, drawing, painting, animation, sound recording, film, video,...
, censorship
Censorship
thumb|[[Book burning]] following the [[1973 Chilean coup d'état|1973 coup]] that installed the [[Military government of Chile |Pinochet regime]] in Chile...
and prostitution
Prostitution
Prostitution is the act or practice of providing sexual services to another person in return for payment. The person who receives payment for sexual services is called a prostitute and the person who receives such services is known by a multitude of terms, including a "john". Prostitution is one of...
. It helped form an international gay burlesque
Burlesque
Burlesque is a literary, dramatic or musical work intended to cause laughter by caricaturing the manner or spirit of serious works, or by ludicrous treatment of their subjects...
scene, and has played a substantial role in the gay shame
Gay shame
Gay Shame is a movement from within the LGBT and queer communities described as a radical alternative to gay mainstreaming and directly posits an alternative view of traditional "gay pride" events and activities which have become increasingly commercialized with corporate sponsors and "safer"...
movement.
History
B!D!F!W! was created in 1990 partly in response to Senator Jesse HelmsJesse Helms
Jesse Alexander Helms, Jr. was a five-term Republican United States Senator from North Carolina who served as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from 1995 to 2001...
's amendment banning the National Endowment of the Arts (NEA) from providing funds for "obscene or indecent art". In 2009, Arcade told the Bay Area Reporter
Bay Area Reporter
The Bay Area Reporter is a free weekly newspaper serving the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered communities in the San Francisco Bay Area; it is the oldest-continuously published, and one of the largest LGBT newspapers in the United States....
: "It was me kind of saying, 'Fuck you' to them." The show has been a hit success despite no funding from the NEA, in part through word of mouth
Word of mouth
Word of mouth, or viva voce, is the passing of information from person to person by oral communication. Storytelling is the oldest form of word-of-mouth communication where one person tells others of something, whether a real event or something made up. Oral tradition is cultural material and...
and positive reviews. Although B!D!F!W! is Arcade's most well-known work, it has garnered very little attention from the mainstream press. Instead, the show relies on what she calls "The Drag Factor": "People drag their friends along from home and from work. In New York people were coming every night and telling me their therapist had recommended the show."
The show continues to evolve, in part from the improvisational nature of the performance. It has been credited with helping form an international gay burlesque scene, and has played a substantial role in the gay shame
Gay shame
Gay Shame is a movement from within the LGBT and queer communities described as a radical alternative to gay mainstreaming and directly posits an alternative view of traditional "gay pride" events and activities which have become increasingly commercialized with corporate sponsors and "safer"...
movement. The show has had over 1,500 performances in over 22 cities internationally.
Themes
Largely about sex, politics and self-censorshipSelf-censorship
Self-censorship is the act of censoring or classifying one's own work , out of fear of, or deference to, the sensibilities of others, without overt pressure from any specific party or institution of authority...
, the show humanizes and dignifies the roles portrayed while remaining true to the roles. Instead of presenting a role as one way or the other, the intent is to be true to the essence of the roles. Says Penny Arcade:
"I hate the politically correct tendency. When you have a PC movement, you have people who don't think, and as soon as people give up their capacity for inquiry you have the basis for totalitarianism."
She hires local erotic dancers for her shows, who perform on stage and around the audience. At one point, there is an audience breakout section: audience members go onto the stage and start dancing. As in all her shows, speaking personally to the audience is an important part of the performance.