Anohni: We performed as Blacklips Performance Cult, every Monday starting at 1:00 am. Marti took this at our third show at the Pyramid.

Marti Wilkerson: That night was my first time seeing the Blacklips Performance Cult at the Pyramid Club. I’d met Anohni just that week when she handed me a flyer for [that night’s play], “Revenge of Blacklips.” The lateness of the hour, the strange plots, the club going on around us—it was like a tawdry jewelry box.

A: Our flyers said things like, “Be beautiful, worship the devil.” I invited all sorts, in bars or on the street, to come and perform. It was about as underground as [you could go] at that time. Pretty quickly, we grew as a collective. Some of the more enthusiastic members started calling us a “cult,” but there was nothing satanic about us. It was the time of Jesse Helms and art censorship, [and] AIDS was still in full force. We were saying “Fuck you” to what was happening in our community.

MW: One night [the show] would be Charlie’s Angels, reinterpreted as the Manson murders, and the next would be something out of a silent film—a beautiful procession, to contrast with the horror. It swung between extremes.

A: The plays were a free-for-all: some amazing, some terrible. You never knew.

MW: Some of the plays had a mockingly religious element; one was called “The Ascent into Heaven,” with “sassy Jesus” and “Gothic Mary.” Many ended once all the characters had killed each other. But the very last thing, I distinctly remember, was Anohni would sing a song—something beautiful and ghostly.

A: The first night Marti came, I remember I sang one of my own songs, “Blue Angel.” My stage name was “Fiona Blue” in those days. [She] was my way of assuming more confidence… It’s not something I talk much about, but [she had] a more aggressive performance style. We were all really into gender expressionism and pre-war Berlin—that sense of a decrepit cabaret. We were obscure, still on the periphery; the audience was generally a toothless assortment [laughs]. I was still grappling with my [sense of self] onstage. I was really young, but I wanted to create a sense of heightened feeling in the room. Like Joey Arias as Billie Holiday as opposed to mainstream drag. It was like an athletic pursuit: getting a room full of drunk people to cry in three minutes.

MW: Anohni’s song would bring a closure and catharsis to the evening. Her voice, even back then, really affected [us]. By the end of “Blue Angel,” we were all in tears. It was otherworldly. The Pyramid was our sanctuary.