January 23, 1996 13 ss Penny Arcade puts on reality clothing At the Vancouver East Cultural Centre (The Cultch) January 11-13 by D.G. Black “There’s a big difference between big art with a little bit of shit in it...and a big piece of shit with a little bit of art in it.” - Penny Arcade Penny Arcade (a.k.a. Susana Ventura) is a straight-from-the-hip writer/performer who loathes most of the useless wanking that emanates from academia and the “palatable art” of mainstream theatre and dance. From New York City’s experimental theatre scene, her newest production True Stories is a slither through the underground of New York’s unpublicized underbelly. With six characters exacted from real-life experiences, she drags the audience into an uncomfortably real world where the landscape is littered with the souls of the damned and scorned: drag queen, post- beat speedfreak junkie, aging prostitute, underground film star, and AIDS- stricken junkie/prostitute. The very appreciative audience for Friday’s show were mostly sturdy, cardigan-attired lesbians and rows of Vancouver’s finest in-transit trans- sexuals hooting and hollering, but also included curious on-lookers from the so- called non-marginalized netherworld of heterosexuality. We all enjoyed Penny Arcade. In 1967 at the age of 17, Penny Arcade ran away from home and was raised by drag queens in New York’s Lower East Side. Soon after, she got involved in experimental theatre and appeared in an Andy Warhol/Paul Morrissey film, Women in Revolt. During Friday’s show, she commented during a pre- show chat that most of Warhol’s films had the camera running continously while nothing really happened; however, after the film stock ran out, the interesting stuff began. After Warhol, she went on to work with American experimental theatre greats John Vacarro and Tom O’Horgan. In 1992, her one-woman show Bitch! Dyke! Faghag! Whore!, The Penny Arcade Sex and Censorship Show, enraged the American National Endowments for the Arts, but entertained New Yorkers for a full year before embarking ona world tour that included Germany, Switzerland, Australia and the U.K. In her latest show, True Stories, first performed in 1993, Penny Arcade is captivating. By revealing the structure of the theatre, post- modernist Arcade strips away the fantasy, placing her dressing mirror, a few props and character’s costumes at the back of the stage. She dressed for each character in front of us, pulling offa dress, yanking on a wig and applying make-up ata make-up table. By showing us_ the structure, she also made herself work harder to convince the audience of her character. The show’s first character, Andrea Whips, was a cariacture of a favourite Warhol superstar drag queen, Candy Darling, featured in Warhol films Trash, Flesh , and Heat, who would stroll around in glorious finery with a bag of candy and query with a sultry, “candy, darling?” Arcade strutted this vivacious bombshell around the stage, her huge blonde wig parked atop her head like a crown of the white stereo-type. Then she took this one to the extreme with a large bag of left-over Xmas candy-canes, offering one to almost each and every one in the audience; to get to the next level at the Cultch, she had audience members on the second level drag her up from the full seats directly below, while staying in character, and ad-libbing to roars of laughter. After Charlene, a re-located New Orleans-housewife-turned-aging- prostitute-in- New York, she brought to life 78-year-old Aunt Lucy, a working class Italian-American. Aunt Lucy, a cantankerous relic who lives to smoke Camel Lights, is the typical senior who finds great pleasure in the strides we’ve made in food processing since her youth. She prefers Cool Whip over ice cream, “cause it’s silky on da troat,” spooning it directly from a large container as she rests comfortably in her Andrée Lanthier Photo Tales from the cross-dressers’ closet over-stuffed chair, attired in a fabulous floor-length housecoat and leopard slippers. As she read the side of the Cool Whip container, she commented that it’s the perfect food for her because “In da old days, everytin’ had too much of sumtin’; now it has nutin’.” It was a dead-on character, played with disciplined conviction and some brilliant dialogue. handle of a special-needs human being? Penny Arcade doesn’t give us the rant of sexuality or victimhood. Instead, she gave us multi-layered characters as human beings, with wants, needs and even ambitions. She humanized even the pathetic junkie loser, without making us feel pity. Penny Arcade is an artist who makes big art. And with very little shit in it. With the tiresome bandying of sexuality these days, the lack of dyke portrayals was a relief. You know, “My name is Susan...and I’m a lesbian.” Is the immediate confession of sexual- orientation supposed to be taken as the The Crucible Slow start ends in flurry of emotion by Darin Clisby Your first impression is made even as you seat yourself for the play. Before you is a tangled wood and dim blue light glimmers amongst the trees. The curtain is a semi-transparent scrim with an almost web-like spray of branches, roots, and limbs. When the Caribbean music comes up and the ghostly forms of girls dancing around a fire you are touched with a sense of the mystical — the magic of this stage. The first two scenes have a few things going well for them. One being excellent scene changes from the forest to the attic room of the Reverend Parris, and then to the home of the Proctor’s. Very innovative and interesting. The change from the forest to the Reverend’s home encompasses Salem’s strong work ethic and religious sentiments. Working men build the scene with various tools as it comes together around them and stained glass windows fall into place. Much applause to William Schmuck, Alix Rodrigues, Tommy Robertson, Michael Glover and their scenic carpenters, artists and electricians. It was a nice piece of work. No great praise for the acting in the first two scenes (with the exception of the four girls when they fall into their spiritual raptures at the end of scene one,) but the third scene makes up for it greatly. We are placed into the ante-chamber of the courtroom for the final decision regarding Elizabeth Proctor. There is real tension built as you watch in frustration as the court sways on the rope of religious subjectivity concerning the Proctors. The final scene wraps things up neatly, and lends itself to new tensions and truly good acting on the parts of many actors including Michael Ball (Deputy-Governor Danforth), Antony Holland (Giles Corey), Randy Hughson (John Proctor) and Wendy Noel (Elizibeth Proctor). Arthur Miller’s The Crucible is directed by Susan Cox and runs until February 3rd at the Vancouver Playhouse.