Penny Arcade (born Susana Carmen Ventura, July 15, 1950) is an American performance artist, actress, and playwright based in New York City. She is known for her comedic wit, forthright delivery, and stage presence. Her performances explore topics such as gentrification, humanity, womanhood, LGBT culture, nostalgia, family history, and the life of the outsider. Additionally, Penny Arcade is known for her association with underground arts and culture. Early years Susana Ventura was born in New Britain, Connecticut, and grew up in a working class Italian immigrant family. Her father fell ill from a severe beating he endured at Ellis Island in 1946 and in 1953 he was committed to Connecticut Valley Hospital in Middletown, Connecticut, where he died 12 years later of a heart attack at age 50. Arcade and her three siblings were raised by Arcade's mother, who worked as a seamstress in local sweatshops. The family was presided over by her maternal grandparents, both born in the 19th century in a remote Southern Italian village of Picerno, Basilicata. As a child, Arcade did not plan to become a performance artist. In her working-class Italian-American family, there "just wasn't a format for that," she explained. Of her early social experiences, Arcade described, "I was perceived to be this girl that everyone had slept with when I was 12 -- no one anyone knew, but they had heard." At age 13, she ran away from home and spent 4 weeks homeless in Old Saybrook, Connecticut. During this time, she was brought to juvenile court and sentenced to two years at the Sacred Heart Academy for Wayward Girls, a reform school run by the semi-cloistered Sisters Of The Good Shepherd. It was there that Arcade wrote her first play at age 14. At age 16, Arcade left home and spent the summer of 1967 homeless in Provincetown, Massachusetts, before ultimately moving to New York City. Early career Arcade adopted the name "Penny Arcade" after an LSD trip with her mentor Jamie Andrews, who took her into his home when she moved to New York. It was Andrews who introduced Arcade to John Vacarro. Ventura's association with avant-garde performance began at age 17, when she became a member of John Vaccaro's Playhouse of the Ridiculous. In 1968, she appeared in painter Larry Rivers film T.I.T.S. In 1969, she starred in the Jackie Curtis play Femme Fatale at La MaMa Etc. with Curtis,