[The earlier piece, Invitation To the Beginning of the End of the World (Invitation To the Beginning of the End of My Career), played at The Club at La MaMa E.T.C. in November 1990; I published this review in the New York Native in December.]
INVITATION TO THE BEGINNING OF THE END
OF THE WORLD
(INVITATION TO THE BEGINNING OF THE END OF MY
CAREER)
(December 1990)
It is nearly impossible to describe Invitation to the
Beginning of the End of the World (Invitation to the Beginning of the End of My
Career), Penny Arcade’s new performance piece at The Club at La MaMa. She, herself, calls it “a disjointed,
fragmented, psychedelic nightmare” and a “theater piece with music.” Together, that’s about as good a designation
as any—and about as accurate as you can get.
It is also very funny, clever, surprising, insightful and, occasionally,
touching.
Performance artist Penny Arcade, whose real name is
Susana Ventura, got her start in the 1960s with John Vaccaro’s Playhouse of the
Ridiculous and in Andy Warhol’s films. Invitation
is her tip o’ the hat to the Playhouse, and she intends it as an “epic” in
Vaccaro’s style. Principally known for
her solo work, Invitation is only Arcade’s third venture into writing
for a full cast.
It would be foolish to try to evaluate Invitation
from one viewing and without knowing much about Arcade’s earlier work, and a
comprehensive description of the event, itself, would be completely confounding
if it were even feasible. Not only does
too much go on onstage, but the stage is not the only place you have to keep
your eye on. First, plants in the
audience, such as a family from Indiana who get caught up in the action, are an
integral part of the show. Then there
are video monitors on either side of the stage repeating what’s happening live
onstage and in the audience and occasionally adding other images as well. I often wished I were in a swivel chair;
trying to watch all this is probably hopeless, and just as probably not expected.
It won’t give you much to go on, but the best that can be
done here is to provide snapshots from Invitation. It starts with Arcade in a white evening gown
acknowledging she’s no longer young.
Having been famous for her youth, she’s loath to give it up, and, in a
way, she doesn’t: she’s joined onstage by Young Penny (Jennifer Belle). At the end of the piece, we also meet Future
Penny (Beth Dodie Bass) as she will appear at the Helmsley Room of the Downtown
Trump Plaza.
The prologue, “Three Pennies in a Fountain, or The Three
Penny Opera,” segues into the Playhouse-style epic, hosted by a ghoulish MC in
whiteface and glitter lipstick, played with Karlovian glee by Edgar
Oliver. This gallimaufry includes a
belly-dancing nun (Arlana Blue), a “member of the audience” (Christine
Donnelly) who sings “The Impossible Dream” and reduces the cast to a grotesque
puddle of tears, an appearance by Andy Warhol (in an uncredited but incredible
likeness), a scantily clad male grind line, a gay-bashing murder by two thugs
(Stephen Wolf and William Norris) singing “I’m a Fag Basher” (to the tune of
“I’m a Girl Watcher”), and a send-up of every conceivable religion in a medley
featuring “People (Who Need Jesus),” “If You Knew Krishna,” “How Much Is That
Guru in the Window?” and a rousing finale of “Hello, Dallai!” (as in
“Lama”). Along the way, Arcade
contemplates the AIDS epidemic, NEA censorship and homophobia.
All of Invitation’s ensemble is marvelous and no
slight is meant by singling out these few.
The make-up and costumes (by the cast) are delightfully funky and
outrageous, and Howard Thies’s lighting is appropriately psychedelic. There’s too much more to mention; besides,
with Penny Arcade, you really have to be there.
(March 1991)
[La
Miseria, Arcade’s fourth venture into
ensemble playwriting and her third installment in the autobiographical trilogy
that started with Based on a True
Story (1990) and continued with Invitation to the Beginning of the End of
the World, was presented at P.S. 122 in the East Village in March 1991. Arcade called to invite me to the performance
because, she said, I might be able to explain to her what she was doing. I was no longer reviewing for a paper, but I accepted
the invitation and wrote my own report.]
The performance world is familiar with artists coming to
grips with their lives in the public eye.
If you go to the theater at all, you will have encountered Arthur
Miller’s After the Fall, Neil Simon’s Brighton Beach trilogy or Spalding
Gray’s continuing autobiography-in-monologue, not to mention the dozens of
other artists who present their lives in various forms for our
consumption. Penny Arcade (née Susana
Ventura) has taken her place among these with a now-completed trilogy that
began in February 1990 with Based on a True Story and continued last
November with Invitation to the Beginning of the End of the World, both
performed at La Mama E.T.C. Her third
piece, extended at Performance Space 122 until 7 April, is La Miseria,
Arcade’s “attempt to explore my feelings of growing up Italian” in America.
Those who know Arcade’s work, beginning with her solo
performances in the mid-1980’s, know that this is a simplistic
characterization. For Arcade, “growing
up Italian,” includes trying to be American and untraditional against the
wishes and beyond the comprehension of her immigrant mother; wanting to be an
actress in a working-class family that rejects anything intellectual, artistic
or different; conflicting with a Catholic Church run by celibate, middle-aged,
white males, and struggling to fit into a performance world she sees as
essentially middle-class.
If you have an unquestioning fondness for
Italian-Americans or a blind devotion to Catholicism, be warned: La Miseria
will surely offend you. Arcade treats
her archetypical Italian-American family with almost unrelenting contempt,
depicting them as undiscriminatingly xenophobic and bigoted, violently hating
blacks, Jews, Puerto Ricans—anyone who isn’t Italian—attributing to them all
the clichéd characteristics we recognize as discredited. Italians, of course, have all the virtues,
including the only decent music, as the family demonstrates in a rendition of “Ma Marie.” The most unattractive character in the family
is Billy, a foul-mouthed bully who resorts to vulgar shouting to eliminate discussion
of anything he doesn’t like or understand—which is nearly everything anyone
else says. When a neighbor brings her
current beau, a Puerto Rican gentleman, as a guest to the house, Billy and his
family insult him until he bolts from the room.
The family scenes are straightforward and unambiguous,
and become quite oppressive after a while.
Arcade reserves her cleverest treatment for her stabs at the
Church. When the audience enters, we
pass by a “statue” of St. Sebastian, arrows and all, and then encounter other
“statues” of saintly hierarchs sited about the room and in chapel-like alcoves
around its perimeter. Before the
performance proper, nuns and worshipers pray and light candles before living
icons—including St. Roseanne De Barr. At
intervals during the piece, these holy images come to life and congregate in
the church to await the return of Jesus.
Far from saintly, they are revealed as unthinking and shallow people
elevated above their deserts. St.
Anthony, whom Arcade designates as the patron saint of lost objects, would
rather be patron of casinos if the position is available. Meanwhile, he hawks his relics: “Does anybody
want to worship this shoe?” “Has anyone
lost her virginity?” One of the female
saints (not up on my Christian iconography, I couldn’t keep all this straight)
takes her devotion to Jesus rather too basically, turning it into an
uncontrollable lust. St. Joseph
complains of his enforced celibacy and the questions about his manhood.
Arcade’s priests and nuns—especially the nuns—are
targets, too, for disparagement. A gay
priest is chastised by his lover, disowned by the very faith the priest serves,
for denying his feelings and disguising his profession. One nun takes her symbolic marriage to Christ
literally, calling him her “boyfriend” and, after an archbishop has condemned
the “treacherous Jews” to eternal damnation, another nun beats and drags a
child Penny from the church when she insists that Jesus was a Jew.
Arcade, in fact, literally confesses her hatred for the
Church, objecting to a self-protective, homophobic, anti-female dogma not
supported anywhere in the Bible. She is
even pelted with mud, like a stoning, for her stance. There is, nonetheless, an ambivalence to
Arcade’s feelings for Catholicism, as she acknowledges that her first venture
into playwriting was undertaken at the behest of her school’s Mother Superior
who recognized in her rebelliousness a nascent theatrical talent.
La Miseria is made up of numerous distinct
scenes and elements. In addition to the
family and church scenes, there is a videotape of Arcade at her mother’s
apartment; monologues by Arcade and an actress, Jennifer Belle, who has played
“Young Penny” in all of the autobiographical pieces, and scenes in a
psychotherapist’s office. These last,
which feature both Arcade, herself, and Young Penny, are, like the monologues,
a vehicle for Arcade to expound her own thoughts directly. The therapist, who is obsessively hung up on
Robert De Niro, seems never to look directly at her patient. She is made to seem either extremely
inattentive or possibly hard of hearing, making Arcade repeat herself several
times, and perhaps her constant focusing anywhere other than on Arcade is
intended to indicate that she is blind as well.
Certainly, she is symbolically both deaf and blind—and clearly useless.
The video, taped in her mother’s kitchen, is a record of
the artist’s attempts to reconcile with her mother. When first shown, I wondered if this were in
fact Susana Ventura’s real mother or a performance on tape. Once I concluded it was real, I felt like a
voyeur at a private encounter. Signora
Ventura seemed somewhat put off by the camera’s presence, but more so by her
daughter’s work and life. She still
seems to reject what Arcade is and remains unhappy, even angry, at her
daughter’s choices and decisions.
Arcade, translating her mother’s Italian for the camera, cajoles and
nudges with softness and conciliation, but Signora Ventura appears little moved
even in the end.
All this sounds very heavy and not a little depressing
perhaps and, to an extent, the family scenes are overlong and repetitive. Arcade, however, has a take on life—her own
and that around her—that is frequently irreverently hilarious and hilariously
weird. La Miseria lasts nearly
two hours without an intermission, but despite the overheated room and hard,
metal chairs, there is enough humor and theatricality to sustain the
performance. I only became acquainted
with Arcade’s work with Invitation, her third piece for an ensemble, so
my perspective is limited, but La Miseria is not as surprising and
quirkily wacky as Invitation. It
is also more focused and cohesive, which is neither an asset nor a fault, and
more serious—at least on the surface.
Since this is only the fourth attempt of a solo performer to compose for
a cast, I am intrigued with where Arcade is going artistically and what she has
to say about our world. So far she seems
pretty close to getting it right, for my dough.
On 10 November 2013, Penny Arcade opened in an Off-Broadway revival of the Tennessee Williams one-act play 'The Mutilated.' It's the performance artist's first effort as a traditional stage actress and she shares the stage with another unconventional performer, Mink Stole who appeared in John Waters's films. In his review of her legit stage début, the New York Times' Charles Isherwood wrote that Arcade portrays her role, Celeste, "with blazing vitality and a kind of childish glee," and that she and Stole "inhabit the scarred souls of their contrasting characters with an intuitive confidence, bringing these comic grotesques to scabrously funny life." Arcade gives a "big, bold performance" which "radiates a lusty hunger that perfectly captures the character’s essence" in the "boisterous" and "scrappy" revival of a play that flopped on Broadway in 1966 (as part of a two-play bill called 'Slapstick Tragedy'). 'The Mutilated' "casts a spell" at the New Ohio Theatre until 1 December, having been extend a week from its original, short run.
ReplyDelete~Rick
Hello! Sorry for the off-topic comment. I'm the NYPL archivist who was assigned to work on the Leonardo Shapiro papers. First, I wanted to thank you -- your articles and blog entries on Shapiro were tremendously helpful to me in contextualizing the materials, and creating the finding aid for the collection.
ReplyDeleteIt's my pleasure to inform you that the papers are open to researchers. The finding aid is linked through my name. I hope you're able to come see the collection before too long!
Kit F--
ReplyDeleteActually, I'd heard about the availability and am planning ot come in to look at the collection soon, probably next month. (I've been working with a Columbia U. professor who's doing her own research on a related topic that overlaps Shapiro and Shaliko, and she told me that the papers were finally available.)
Thanks for the acknowledgement and the compliment. I didn't know Leo intimately, but I may know more about his overall career (and some of his life as well) than any living person. (I certainly have more documents in one place--my apartment, as it happens--than anyone except, now, the Billy Rose Archive. I'll bet, though, that I have some things you don't! I have a few pieces I suspect Leo didn't know are extant.)
I hope to meet you one of these days soon. I look forward to viewing the papers.
~Rick
Hi, Rick! I just wrote a long piece about my "relationship" (?) with Leo. And then remembered being in La Miseria a year earlier than Blue Heaven! And THEN found this! Anyway, hi from NM!
ReplyDeleteRosalia!
DeleteIt's been so long since we've been in touch that I assumed you'd moved, changed your e-mail, or just ghosted me. I'm glad to hear from you.
You may know that I've posted many, many articles on Leo and his work on this blog. Most recently, in the face of closed theaters or my reluctance to go back after the so-called reopening, I posted "reconstructions" of two Shaliko productions.
I published "'Punch!' (Shaliko Company, 1987)" on 4 Sept. 2021, and "'Children of the Gods': Launching The Shaliko Company (1973)" on 19 Nov. Other, older posts go back to the very beginning of ROT (which, as of this morning, has 999 posts).
I'm not even including the post in which Leo gets a passing mention! There are probably hundreds of those. If you use Blogger's own search engine for "Shapiro," you'd come up with an unmanageable number of hits!
It's great to hear you're still in the same area. If you let me know how to get back in touch, I'd love to contact you again. (I'm at the same e-mail address, or you can leave a contact address here and I'll delete it after I get it so it won't sit around for public access.)
~Rick