The Goddess Returns: Joey Arias Gets His Twist Back

It’s been 50 years since the extravagant performance artist Joey Arias moved to New York City, and this fall, Arias is celebrating in style with a revival of the original Arias with a Twist, his famed collaboration with puppetry genius Basil Twist. Original means a lot of things, and not least because Twist and Arias, in his Thierry Mugler scanties, are two of the downtown scene’s true originals. For the first time since 2008, they’re returning their show to its pocket-sized form at its original home, HERE Arts Center, rather than revive the souped-up 2011 edition that played Abrons Arts Center.

The impetus for the remount was not anything in particular (18 years is not an especially auspicious anniversary); Arias and Twist just couldn’t escape the fact that people wanted to see it again. “When I’m on tour,” Arias says, “I get off the stage, and people come up and they’re like ‘Arias with a Twist!’ Everywhere I went, it was always Arias with a Twist and ‘Are you gonna do it again?'”

But before they can take us through creating and recreating the piece, they have to take us back to the beginning.

Arias drops names with the grandeur of someone who’s seen it and done it all, but the thing is, he has. “I’m an original Groundling. I had a record contract with Capitol Records at 14 years old. I used to hang out with the Mamas and the Papas and Sly at the Family Stone. I hung out with Edith Head.” Never feeling at home in L.A., where he was transplanted at the age of six after a childhood in North Carolina, he fled to the Big Apple in 1976, where he said, “New York, do whatever you want with me.”

Twist is somewhat demurer, but with no less grand a CV. His calling-card production is a mesmerizing underwater puppet fantasia titled Symphonie Fantastique, set to the Berlioz symphony of the same name. He’s worked all over the world, with collaborators ranging from Paula Vogel (The Long Christmas Ride Home) to Kate Bush (the Before the Dawn residency) to Nick Kroll and John Mulaney (the giant tuna sandwich monster in Oh, Hello).

Travelling in more-or-less the same circles, Arias and Twist were mutual fans of one another. “We did something together for an event,” Twist says. “Joey was doing some of his Billie Holiday standards, but he had this band of my grandfather’s puppets behind him. And it was sensational. The chemistry between Joey and these puppets was amazing.”

That was the seed of their collaboration, which eventually took shape as the 70-minute Arias with a Twist, in which Arias is abducted by aliens, acid trips through the Garden of Eden while singing “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” King Kongs his way through the New York City skyline, and eventually ends up in a Busby Berkeley kick line atop a rotating cake. It blew everybody’s mind.

It was a top moment in Arias’s already eclectic career, with rave reviews and all six rows in the house sold out each night. What’s it like for the talk of the town to once again become the talk of the town? “I don’t know about being the talk of the town,” Arias jokes. “I guess when people see me in bathrooms on my knees, that’s the talk of the town. Klaus Nomi and myself and David Bowie [performing on Saturday Night Live] were the talk of the town. Being talk of the town is great because people will come and see the show and support the artistry. That’s how we make a living. A lot of people can’t do that anymore. And being a talk of the town also translates into great ticket sales.”

Arias and Twist started talking about a revival in 2024, but Twist was so booked up with other projects that he couldn’t fit it into his schedule until now. In a way, it was a fortuitous delay. After years of working on other people’s shows, including the recent West End hit My Neighbor Totoro, he wanted to do something that was his own.

“I missed doing my work,” Twist explains. “This is my project. Our project.”

But a lot has changed, and the fact that the show is coming back at all is a testament to Arias and Twist’s tenacity. “It’s amazing how quickly we made this show [in 2008],” Twist remembers. “We hit the gas and went for it and ran to Canal Street,” Twist recalls. “It was not a year of Zoom meetings to get there. I don’t want to be a bummer, but it’s so hard now. I go to buy a dome for the little UFO and I stop by Canal Plastics, which is the last remaining plastics place. They don’t sell those domes anymore. You can’t get them.” Fortunately, all the major sets and props have lived in Twist’s storage unit, so it doesn’t require as intense a rebuild.

Arias’s challenges are more personal. Following years of 10-show weeks in Cirque du Soleil’s Zumanity, Arias was prescribed opioids for chronic pain, and various personal struggles led to full addiction around 2017. “I wound up drinking white wine 24 hours a day,” he remembers. “Literally, I would have bottles in my bag. I was doing Oxycontin, 30 pills a day.” He credits his longtime friend, Paper Magazine cofounder Kim Hastreiter, with putting together the intervention that saved his life.

Staging Arias with a Twist in 2026 has taken “quite a few meetings way in advance,” Twist admits. “It feels a little more like pushing a stone uphill.” But we’re getting the best versions of Arias and Twist yet. “We’re more knowledgeable and seasoned,” Arias says, “but Basil’s Basil and Joey’s Joey. I feel stronger than ever. Some people, when they get clean, they change. I cleaned up, but I’m still Joey. It’s nice that people know that sobriety is part of my shit. You got me clean and I’m happy to be here. I am the goddess, remember that.”

“Joey’s just better than ever,” Twist adds with a smile. Time may change things, “but then we are reminded of how much is the same. This show comes from our love for each other. That’s still there, in force.”