Penny Arcade presents Bad Reputation: Performances, Essays, Interviews (MIT Press, 2009)

Penny Arcade (born Susanna Ventura) emerged in the 1980s as a primal force in the New York art scene and an originator of what has come to be called performance art. With high camp and street-smart, punk-rock cabaret showmanship, her work explores themes including women’s sexuality, censorship, working class and immigrant identity, and the restrictive and stifling aspects of her Italian-American family. Bad Reputation, the first book by and about Penny Arcade, includes the autobiographical plays Bitch!Dyke!Faghag!Whore!, Bad Reputation, and La Miseria. The complete scripts are accompanied by a new interview with Penny Arcade by Chris Kraus, archival photographs of the East Village scene and of Arcade’s performances, and contributions by Ken Bernard, Sarah Schulman, Steve Zehentner, and Stephen Bottoms.