Tell us about your history with this show.
Stick Up! is a show that I saw in a puppet festival in Montreal, and it was my favorite thing by far that I had see at the festival, and one of my favorite things I had seen in a while. The panache and the real joy they took in doing it was what struck me. It was smart, funny, it moved quick, it was clever, it was satirical of popular culture.

What set Stick Up! so far apart from the rest?
It falls into a whole genre of its own, this whole objects theater where people use everyday objects and repurpose them to use in a puppetry context. It’s just done with a lot of flair. It’s basically a spoof of bank heist films or the big getaway films done in a tiny space by one really goofy and appealing performer with lots and lots of invention.

It just keeps delighting you, it’s just so hilarious and beautiful how they do it. The set looks like a shop with a bunch of industrial shelving and cleaning supplies, and they kind of turn everything into this huge, epic, exciting Tom Cruise adventure. And I’m super glad we got them here!

As director of the Dream Music Puppetry Program at HERE, what do you look for to bring back to the theater?
I’m always looking for things that are small—though this show is rather dense, and it’s going to be a squeeze to fit it into the downstairs theater. I’m just looking for something that’s original, that’s different, that shines in a way that I like. Especially if I’m going to bring something to New York, because of course there are a lot of great artists in New York I want to present. I just want it to be excellent. And this is excellently executed and wonderfully paced and timed. I want to bring the best of what I see out there.

And what do you have coming up?
Before Stickup, we’re doing the Holiday Puppet Parlor on Tuesday, which is a sort of cabaret show that we do regularly of puppetry and friends of puppetry performers. Tigger!, Dirty Martini and Julie Atlas Muz will be there, among others, so that will be a lot of fun.

Stick Up! (Braquage)
Dec. 16–18, HERE, 145 6th Ave. (at Dominick St.), www.here.org; $20.

The love- and brainchild of renowned drag diva Joey Arias and world-class puppeteer Basil Twist, Arias with a Twist is a triumph of artistic collaboration and non-linear performance art. And yet (surprisingly and thankfully), it never takes itself too seriously, a real coup for the downtown arts scene.

Arias delivers his performance with his usual Judy Garland aplomb, and his Wizard of Ozzian wonderment suits the conceit well: Wonder Woman of the Z Chromosome Arias gets lost in time and space, but returns to New York in time to perform torch songs with the Dream Music Orchestra, while Twist’s sublime and surreal puppets are operated by consummate puppeteers. All in all, a spectacle in the best sense of the word.

Some of the most striking sequences of the show are the least obtrusive. (Or rather, less obtrusive. In a world of aliens probing with cosmic dildos and a giant emerald vagina doing the can-can, “least obtrusive” seems an impossible phrase.) The scene in which Arias floats through a giant goldfish bowl featuring Daniel Brodie’s dreamlike multilayered projections evokes all the pathos of Pink Floyd’s “How I Wish You Were Here” (after all, we’re just “two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl year after year”). And Arias’ sulky rendition of Eric Carmen’s “All By Myself” is surprisingly moving.

Toward the end of the evening, Arias began to pick on a young female in the audience in a style of aggressive comedy unbecoming of a lady. So be forewarned; if you were born with female genitalia, sit far enough back to avoid persecution.

All in all, though, Arias with a Twist shrieks of love and care. And for a show featuring a satanic threesome and a King Kong sequence, that’s something to write home about.

Arias with a Twist (Deluxe)

Through Oct. 16, Abrons Arts Center, 466 Grand St. (betw. Pitt & Columbia Sts.), www.supporthenrystreet.org; $35–$65.