THENEWYORKER,FEBRUARY10, 2020 17
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DOPPELGÄNGERSDEPT.
THEMASKEDSINGER
O
n a recent Thursday, as a band
warmed up in a dark subterranean
theatre at the Museum of Modern Art,
a figure in a rubber mask stood in a
doorway offstage, bathed in the red glow
of an EXIT light. This was the lead singer
of the venerable and anonymous San
Francisco art-rock collective the Res-
idents, known for their iconic eyeball
helmets, top hats, and tuxedos. They
were doing a “stumble-through” rehearsal
of “God in Three Persons,” their 1988
rock-opera album, newly adapted for
the stage by the video artist John San-
born, who watched from the back of the
house. It’s about Mr. X, an entrepreneur
who becomes entwined with a pair of
gender-fluid conjoined twins, who may
or may not exist. “I feel that the twins
aren’t real,” Sanborn said. “These are the
heavenly angels he wants to live with,
but it ain’t gonna happen.” The show
barriers. “My editor said, ‘You made the
flood look like a very strong kung-fu
person who is mad!’”
In school, Yujia had learned little
about Johnson. “I didn’t know he was
so important in American history,” she
said. “In China, we hear about Wash-
ington, Kennedy, Clinton, Bush, and
Obama. And Nixon, because he’s very
important to China.”
Before translating a novel, Yujia typ-
ically reads through to the end. But for
nonfiction she prefers to focus strictly
on the facts as they accumulate, with-
out having seen the conclusion. At this
point, she has a highly detailed image
of Texas geography, along with vivid bi-
ographical knowledge of Johnson’s early
mentors and rivals. But she still doesn’t
know the exact endgame of his politi-
cal career. She commented that, while
she’s aware that Johnson was brought
down by the Vietnam War, she’s not sure
if he resigned or left in some other fash-
ion. When her visitor offered to give the
short version, she declined. “I want to
wait,” she said.
—Peter Hessler
would make its MOMA début that week-
end; tickets sold out quickly.
The Residents’ eyeball masks, which
encompass the head, aren’t conducive to
singing. (“The eyeball is hell,” an associ-
ate said.) Here the lead singer wore a
bald-capped rubber mask with arched
eyebrows and a bulbous nose, which, com-
pared with the eyeball, the associate said,
“feels like air-conditioning.” The mask
was accessorized with sunglasses, a din-
ner jacket, a Residents eyeball T-shirt,
and Under Armour sweatpants.
The musicians, including a trombon-
ist and a Mellotron player, kicked into
the overture, which featured clangorous
music based on “Double Shot (Of My
Baby’s Love),” by the Swingin’ Medal-
lions—the organ riff hints at the eerie
garage rock of “96 Tears”—and San-
born’s video art was projected onscreen.
Onstage, Mr. X waltzed with a doppel-
gänger of himself (Caitlin Hicks), and
a video depicted him as a kind of tel-
evangelist, healing the afflicted in a car-
nival tent, groping the healed, and ap-
pearing in headlines about a scandalous
grope-related fall from grace. (“I guess
it’s a bit of #MeToo,” the band’s friend
Homer Flynn said.) The vocalist Lau-
rie Amat, from the 1988 album, sang the
credits as they appeared onscreen.
In their five-decade career, the Res-
idents have released some fifty albums
and made dozens of short films. They
helped pioneer the music video, before
MTV and then on it; inspired artists
from Matt Groening to Devo; and com-
posed for “Pee-wee’s Playhouse.” MOMA’s
collection includes their videos, a boxed
set of recordings displayed inside a re-
frigerator, and an eyeball helmet. The
band became less anonymous a few years
ago, when Hardy Fox revealed himself
to be its chief composer; he died, of can-
cer, in 2018.
As “God” begins, Mr. X sings of how
he first encounters the twins, who can
see into souls and inspire the lonely
masses. Touched, he offers to manage
them. Sanborn, who met the Residents
in the mid-seventies (“My friend said,
‘They’re fucking with LaserDiscs’ ”),
chose to depict the twins only onscreen,
a realm that displays the phantasmago-
ric workings of Mr. X’s mind. Played by
the angelic-looking Jiz Lee, “a gender-
queer porn star who’s worked with me
before,” as Sanborn put it, the twins are
dressed in diaphanous, glowing-white
costumes that evoke the Flying Nun.
Kaleidoscopic imagery of eyeballs, pup-
pets, and torsos—and severed dogs’ legs,
and bloody hundred-dollar bills—floated
onscreen as Mr. X performed the songs,
talking-blues style, in rhymed couplets,
evoking the reading aloud of a grue-
some, far-out children’s book.
After a few songs, the director, Tra-
vis Chamberlain, a tidy younger man in
a lavender polo shirt, said, “Mr. X needs
water!” A bottle of Poland Spring was
procured. Later, Mr. X stood on a chair
and yelled about a liquid doughnut;
flames appeared behind him onscreen.
Chamberlain called out, “Does anyone
know what happened to our hula hoop?”
The next scene involved a silver,
pickle-shaped phallus flying through the
air, and stylized erotic wrestling. By the
end, the twins had been separated, and
Mr. X had spoken of pleasure, pain, il-
lusion, and confusion. They rehearsed
their bows, and Amat, beaming (“I love
this job!” she said later), joined the masked
performers onstage. Fin.
Afterward, Mr. X removed his bald
cap and rested. Hicks shook out her neat
dark bob. A few notes. Sanborn: “If you
move, you need to move with a certainty,
not an oops—we want the kind of chaos
we want.” Chamberlain: “Laurie, can
you make sure your orgasm has a vo-
coder on it?” After a break, the musi-
cians donned matte-black wolf masks.
It was time for the dress rehearsal.
—Sarah Larson
The Residents
