Penny Arcade: Bad Reputation

‘What’s being done now in all of the cities – all over the world – is removing the alternative, removing the bohemian, taking the rock and roll, the funk, the poetry right out of it … I want to offer an alternative.’

Meet Penny Arcade: performance artist, author, actress and documentary-maker. A former ‘superstar’ of Andy Warhol’s Factory, Arcade is an enduring figure of 1960s New York counterculture.

Brash, funny and razor-sharp, Arcade’s body of work shows an ongoing preoccupation with themes of sexuality, censorship, gentrification and the avant-garde. In Arcade’s first visit to Melbourne after a 20-year absence, she comes to the Wheeler Centre to talk about gentrification – of neighbourhoods, cities and ideas – and how a previous visit to Melbourne shaped her thinking.

Presented in partnership with Theatre Works.