Book Celebration for Artistic Collaborators Karen Malpede & Penny Arcade

Join us for an evening celebrating new publications by theatre artists Karen Malpede and Penny Arcade: Malpede's Last Radiance: Radical Lives, Bright Deaths (edited by Marvin Carlson) and 4 by Malpede plus an Intervention, as well as Arcade's Bad Reputation: Performances, Essays, Interviews (including an essay by Steve Zehentner).

The evening will feature readings from both of Malpede's books, and a reading from Arcade's book with Zehentner. Followed by a panel with the authors and Marvin Carlson, moderated by Frank Hentschker.

Karen Malpede is author, and frequently the director, of 22 plays. With the actor-director-producer, George Bartenieff, she co-founded Theater Three Collaborative in 1995. She is author of the memoir Last Radiance: Radical Lives, Bright Deaths (Vine Leaves Press, 2025) and 4 by Malpede plus an Intervention (Egret, 2025). Her recent plays are: Troy Too (HERE, 2023);.Blue Valiant ( Farm Arts Collective, YouTube, 2021); Other Than We (LaMama, 2018, podcast for Columbia University’s Earth Institute, 2019); Extreme Whether (LaMama, 2016, ARTCOP21, Paris, 2015; Theater for the New City, 2014) Dinner During Yemen, (Signature Theater, New York, 2018); Hermes in the Anthropocene: A Dogologue (University of Iowa, Iowa City, 2019; Reed College, Portland, 2015); The Beekeeper’s Daughter (Theater for the New City, New York, 2016, Theater Row Theater, 1996, Bleeker St Theater.,1995; Dionysus Festival, Italy, 1994) Another Life (Art of Justice Festival, Gerald W. Lynch Theater, September 11, 2011; Irondale, 2012, Theater for the New City, 2013; Guild Hall, London, 2013), Iraq: Speaking of War (CUNY-Graduate Center, New York, 2006, Culture Project, New York, 2007). With George Bartenieff, she co-adapted and directed I Will Bear Witness. OBIE Award (Classic Stage,2000; New End Theatre, London; English Theatre, Berlin; Theater J, toured Germany & Austria 2001-2005); She is author of the anthology Plays in Time: The Beekeeper’s Daughter, Prophecy, Another Life, Extreme Whether (Intellect, 2016); editor of Acts of War: Iraq and Afghanistan in Seven Plays (Northwestern, 2011), and author of an anthology of her early work: A Monster Has Stolen the Sun and Other Plays. Her short plays, fiction, and essays on ecofeminism, the climate crisis, a new green Federal Theater, bearing witness, the Iraq war, the U.S. torture program have been published in The Kenyon Review, TriQuarterly, Dark Matter, Howlround, Transformations, Torture Magazine, New Theater Quarterly, TDR, New York Times, and elsewhere. She has taught theater and literature at Smith College, New York University Tisch School of the Arts, and John Jay College-CUNY. McKnight National Playwrights’ Fellowship, New York Foundation for the Arts, Vogelstein fellow. 

Penny Arcade (aka Susana Ventura) is an international cultural icon, celebrated as a performer, poet, writer, and actress who speaks truth to power. Since debuting at 18 in John Vaccaro’s Play-House of the Ridiculous and appearing in Andy Warhol’s Women in Revolt, she has been a pioneering force in experimental theater, performance art, and spoken word. Over five decades, she has created 18 full-length works and hundreds of solo performances, blending humor, social critique, and a focus on outsiders, cultural memory, and community building. Since 1992, she has collaborated with architect and designer Steve Zehentner to transform performance spaces, presenting over 900 performances in 80 cities worldwide. She has championed artists through mentorship, residencies, and archiving projects, preserving the legacies of Jack Smith, Holly Woodlawn, and others. Arcade and Zehentner also co-founded The Lower East Side Biography Project, a pioneering oral history initiative documenting New York’s avant-garde. Her work has been featured in numerous films, publications, and collections, including Bad Reputation (Semiotext(e)/MIT Press). She has received the Bessie Award for Sustained Achievement, Ruthie Award, Edinburgh Fringe First, and residencies at MacDowell, Yaddo, and the New York Theatre Workshop.

Steve Zehentner is a New York–based filmmaker, theater designer/director, and archivist. Since 1992, he has collaborated with Penny Arcade on over 900 performances in 80 cities, creating anarchic, humanist spectacles including Sisi Sings the Blues, Love, Sex and Sanity, Bad Reputation, Old Queen, and Longing Lasts Longer. They are currently developing The Art of Becoming, a nine-part live episodic memoir, LP, and podcast. Zehentner co-founded the Lower East Side Biography Project, a video oral history archive documenting the artists and innovators who shaped the neighborhood’s cultural legacy. The project trains young filmmakers in production and post-production, producing biographies that broadcast weekly on New York cable television, and its archive holds over 1,500 entries. In addition, he has produced independent social documentaries and educational programming for PBS, including The Color Line: Racism in America and The Sunflower Project. His work has screened internationally and is held in museum collections. He has received multiple awards, grants, and residencies, including from MacDowell, Yaddo, and the New York State Council on the Arts.

Marvin Carlson is Sidney E. Cohn Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Theatre, Comparative Literature, and Middle Eastern Studies at the Graduate Centre, CUNY. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has received an honorary doctorate from the University of Athens, Greece, the ATHE Career Achievement Award, the ASTR Distinguished Scholarship Award, the Bernard Hewitt prize, the George Jean Nathan Award, the Calloway Prize, the George Freedley Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He is the founding editor of the journal European Stages and the author of over two hundred scholarly articles and fifteen books that have been translated into fourteen languages. His most recent books are Hamlet's Shattered Mirror: Theatre and the Real (2016) and Ten Thousand Nights: Highlights from 50 Years of Theatre-Going (2017).