Penny Arcade, aka Susana Ventura, is an international cultural icon, revered as a performer, poet, writer, and actress who speaks truth to power. Innovative, charismatic and magnetic, she has brought experimental theater to mainstream audiences and built a reputation for innovation, authenticity and integrity in the international art world. Penny Arcade occupies a rare position in the American avant-garde, through her long association with the architects of the counter culture from Andy Warhol to John Vaccaro, Jack Smith, Judith Malina, Jonas Mekas, Charles Henri Ford, H.M. Koutoukas, Charles Ludlam, Tom O’Horgan and Quentin Crisp. Penny has participated in creating new art forms in every decade since the late 1960s. She debuted at 18 in John Vaccaro’s explosive Play-House of the Ridiculous, New York’s legendary glitter/glam, rock and roll, seminal queer political theatre. At 19 she was a superstar for Andy Warhol’s Factory featured in the Warhol/Morrissey comedy, Women in Revolt. She emerged as a force in the performance art scene of the 1980s, spoken word in the 1990s and created a prolific body of experimental theater in the 1990s to the present.
