Old Queen. The two most dreaded words in gay male culture! But was it always this way? "Not so," says Penny Arcade who, as a teenager, knocked around in gay bars in Hartford, Connecticut, Providence, Rhode Island, Boston, and Provincetown and finally at just past 16, washed up on the shores of Greenwich Village and the Lower East Side. She sought refuge and enlightenment in the gay bars and gay coffee shops from the early 1960's, the fomenting place of modern culture where the ridiculous met the sublime, where criminality forged with intellectual innovation, where low art met high art, and where the outsider status of homosexuality was a breeding ground for unique world views. Presiding over these palaces of the synthesis of culture were the old queens.

Says Arcade, "When I was 14, 15, 16... my goal every night was to get to sit at the table with the old queens. A difficult invitation to get for a teenage girl. But the old queens knew everything I wanted to know and for them conversation was more than an art, it was the existential nectar that gave form to the power of the word. The old queens knew everything about life and travel, the human condition, about the world, this one and others and I craved their company. They did not tolerate banality nor mediocrity and theirs was a fierce and unapologetic intelligence and wit. Just sitting at a table of old queens in a dark bar or fluorescent coffee shop, lifted your IQ twenty points! Unbeknownst to me, I was on a trajectory to become an old queen. And I am, finally, an old queen... but in a world that has no understanding of the value of old queens."

Old Queen, Arcade's theatrical memoir evokes the magic and memory of the gay men who raised her: from little known figures like Jamie Andrews, who would shortly later transform David Bowie from a folksinger to a glitter glam rock star. He was the gay man who took her in off the streets, gave her a place to live, and took her from performing on the streets to the stages of The Playhouse Of The Ridiculous and the Warhol Factory. These men range from Jackie Curtis, Bobby Beers, Ritta Redd, Herbert Hunke, Joel Markman, to seminal figures like John Vacarro, Charles Henri Ford, HM Koutoukas, Taylor Mead, Jack Smith, and Andy Warhol. Old Queen is the latest offering from a veteran playwright and performance artist at the peak of her powers. Expect Arcade's signature blend of spot-on impersonations, trenchant wit, and theatrical political humanism. It's an intoxicating combination you won't want to miss! Two special performances where Penny develops the work in front of you!

As the host and producer of the long-running "Lower East Side Biography Project" and the feature-length "Stemming the Tide of Cultural Amnesia" with long time collaborator Steve Zehentner, Arcade has a demonstrated commitment to preserve the rich cultural and intellectual history of the off-the-radar NY downtown, including those of the East Village and Lower East Side. For the first time in her theater work, she revisits these neighborhoods from the perspective of the teenage runaway, Susana Ventura.

An international superstar and cultural icon, Penny Arcade is the author/auteur of ten full-length performance pieces, including the international mainstream hit Bitch!Dyke!Faghag!Whore! Her work as been presented from Sydney Opera House to Royal Festival Hall, from Brazil to Austria. Her book, BAD REPUTATION: Performances, Essays, Interviews, will be published by Semiotext(e) MIT PRESS in Fall 2009. A teenage superstar of Warhol's Factory, she is featured in Women In Revolt, available on video. Quentin Crisp named her his soul mate, the woman with whom he most identified. She is depicted by actress Cynthia Nixon in the new film about his later years, An Englishman In NY.

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