Penny Arcade is a performance artist, actress, director, playwright, and activist who has been creating and performing her own work for the past thirty years. She was an original member of John Vaccaro’s Playhouse of The Ridiculous, and an Andy Warhol Factory superstar. At age 19 she was featured in the Warhol/Morrisey  film,  Women  In Revolt.  Penny has worked at La  MaMa E.T.C, Theater of the New City, P.S. 122/Performance Space New York, New Ohio Theatre, The Village Gate, Dixon Place, Lincoln Center Atrium, St Ann’s Warehouse and Joe’s Pub at The Public Theater. Arcade’s credits include: MOKE EATER (1968), FEMME FATAL (1969), NITE CLUB (1970), TINSELTOWN TIRADE(1982); plus her own original work; WHILE YOU WERE OUT (1985), INVISIBLE ON THE STREETS (1986), BID FOR THE BIG TIME (1988), BRINGING IT ALL BACK HOME (1988), OPEATING UNDER THE INFLUENCE (1988), TRUE STORIES (1989/1996), QUIET NIGHT FOR SID AND NANCY AT THE CHELSEA HOTEL (1989), BITCH, DYKE, FAGHAG, WHORE!, (1990/2018), BASED ON A TRUE STORY (1990), INVITATION TO THE BEGINNING OF THE WORLD (1990), LA MISERIA (1991), STATE OF GRACE (1991), SUNDAY TEA WITH QUENTIN CRISP (1992), AN EVENING WITH PENNY ARCADE AND QUENTIN CRISP (1995), LOVE SEX AND SANITY (1995), SISI SINGS THE BLUES (1996), BAD REPUTATION (1994/2004), GAY SHAME (1998), THE LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT OF QUENTIN CRISP (1999), VIRTUAL ARCADE: CYBER PERFORMANCE AND INTERVIEW SHOW (2000), LADY FEST (2000), ALIVE AND KICKING (2001), SEX POLITICS REALITY (2001), NEW YORK VALUES (2002), PENNY ARCADE AT THE WARHOL  MUSEUM (2002), ARTIST SURVIVOR (2002), WORKING MY WAY DOWN (2003), REBELLION CABARET (2004), ESCAPE FROM THE EAST VILLAGE (2004), PENNY ARCADE IN MOTION (2005), DENIAL OF DEATH (2009/2011), OLD QUEEN W-I-P(2009), THE VERY BEST OF PENNY ARCADE (2010), LONGING LASTS LONGER (2011/2018), THE MUTILATED (2013), THE GIRL WHO KNEW TOO MUCH (2013/2018).THE FAGHAG  AND  HER  FRIENDS IN THE SUMMER OF LOVE (2018)plus literally hundreds of one off performance pieces.

Penny Arcade was born Susan Carmen Ventura in New Britain, Connecticut to an immigrant Southern Italian family. She left home at 13 and was later sent to reform school run by The Sisters of the Good Shepherd.  On her second day, the nun in charge of entertainment witnessed young Susan's emotional outburst in the dining room and said to her, “You are funny! You have timing! I want you to write me a play”.  At 16 she was released and ended up in Provincetown during the Summer of Love. At 17, she landed in New York City where she became involved with John Vaccaro’s Playhouse of the Ridiculous. In 1982, she performed her first solo performance piece in Hibiscus’s TINSELTOWN TIRADE at Theater for the New City. Since 1985, Arcade has developed numerous long form, text based, multi-media performance pieces. In 1992 she began collaborating with her artistic partner, former architect and video producer Steve  Zehentner. She is also a poet and essayist.  www.pennyarcade.tv

Steve Zehentner is a former architect who now works as a videographer, as well as a sound designer, stage designer, director, and archivist. In 1992, he began to collaborate with Penny Arcade. Together, the pair created: BITCH, DYKE, FAGHAG, WHORE!, (1992/2018), SUNDAY  TEA  WITH QUENTIN CRISP (1992), AN EVENING WITH PENNY ARCADE AND QUENTIN CRISP (1995), LOVE SEX AND SANITY (1995), TRUE STORIES (1989/1996), SISI SINGS THE BLUES (1996), BAD REPUTATION (1994/2004), THE LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT OF QUENTIN CRISP (1999), ALIVE AND KICKING (2001), NEW YORK VALUES  (2002), WORKING MY WAY DOWN (2003), REBELLION CABARET (2004), THE VERY BEST OF PENNY ARCADE (2010), OLD QUEEN W-I-P (2009), LONGING LASTS LONGER (2011/2018), THE GIRL WHO KNEW TOO MUCH (2013/2018). THE  FAGHAG  AND  HER  FRIENDS IN THE SUMMER OF LOVE (2018)

In 1999 Arcade and Zehentner co-founded The Lower East Side Biography Project: Stemming the Tide of Cultural Amnesia, a biography series and oral history archive that works to ensure that future generations have access to the mad souls of invention that built this New York City neighborhood's reputation as an incubator for authenticity, rebellion and iconoclasm. The project features performers, activists, visual artists, musicians, writers, scholars, and filmmakers. Various biographies from the project have been screened at Garage Center for Contemporary Culture – Moscow,  Outfest Film Festival – Los Angeles, Drexel University Television – Philadelphia, New York University, The New School, Anthology Film Archives, Millennium Film Workshop, Pioneer Theatre, Chashama Film Festival - New York, ABC No Rio, Hampshire College, Santa Fe State College, Portland State University, Theatre for the New City, Theatre 80 St. Marks, and the City University of New York Graduate Center.  www.stevezehentner.com/lower-east-side-biography-project

Zehentner  also worked as a videographer for many different organizations including: The 9/11 Memorial and Museum, Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, The Children’s Defense Fund, The Olga Lengyel  Institute for Holocaust Studies and Human Rights, PBS Channel 13, Angel Orensanz Foundation,  American Institute of Architects,  Kulturzeit ZDF Germany, City University of New York Graduate Center, The New School University, The Children's Aid Society, Penny Arcade Productions, Idaho Public Television and Syracuse University. He is the creator of the PBS documentaries: The Color Line: Racism in America and The Sunflower Project: Questioning the Limits of Forgiveness. www.stevezehentner.com