
Justin Vivian Bond is a singer, a songwriter, a pagan, a performance artist, a dendrophile, a Radical Faerie, an author, a Wiccan, and a member of the trans gentry in this country – ladies and gents alike – who gracefully assert their right to be part of humanity’s vastly pollinated family tree. Anyone who has ever seen v perform – Justin prefers the non-gender, all-encompassing pronoun of “v” – can attest to v’s talent which borders on the alchemistic as v takes a lyric and lunges for its throat with v’s own throaty voice as if to throttle it and, at the same time, resurrect it by imbuing it with a reimagined, revivifying life all its own – much like Justin Vivian Bond has reimagined, revivified and resurrected v’s truest self. Here is v’s website to keep you updated on JVB’s performance schedule and appearances.
Writer, actor, director and fellow Radical Faerie John Cameron Mitchell cast Bond as “Justin Vivian Bond” in his 2006 film Shortbus. Bond played the host(ess) of the fictional Brooklyn art/social/sexual salon for which the film was titled. Cameron also created and performed the character of the East German transgender rock singer Hedwig in the musical he co-wrote with composer Stephen Trask, Hedwig and the Angry Inch. He received an Obie award for the 1998 off-Broadway production and was nominated for a Golden Globe for his performance in the 2001 film version, which he also directed and for which he received the Best Director award at that year’s Sundance Film Festival. Mitchell also directed Nicole Kidman in the 2010 film adaptation of David Lindsay-Abaire’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Rabbit Hole. He got his start on Broadway playing Huck Finn in the musical of Big River and creating the role of Dickon in the musical of The Secret Garden. He also won an Obie in 1992 for portraying a version of the young Larry Kramer in Kramer’s autobiographical play, The Destiny of Me. He had the recurring role of e-book editor David Pressler-Goings in Lena Dunham’s HBO series Girls in A 2014 Broadway revival of Hedwig and the Angry Inch, directed by Michael Mayer, starred Neil Patrick Harris. Others who played the title role during the revival’s run were Taye Diggs, Michael C. Hall, Andrew Rannells, Darren Criss, and, yes, John Cameron Mitchell. He is a series cast member in Hulu’s Shrill starring Aidy Bryant based on Lindy West’s memoir, and is now touring in his The Origin of Love: The Songs and Stories of Hedwig, which features the songs of Trask. He recently released his new musical, co-written with Bryan Weller, as a fictional podcast series entitled Anthem: Homunculus. It stars John, along with Glenn Close, Patti LuPone, Cynthia Erivo, Denis O’Hare, Nakhane, Laurie Anderson, Aland Mandell, Marion Cotillard, Ben Foster, and Madeline Brewer. It is presented by the Luminary Podcast Network. Click here to discover Season One.
They chatted in JVB’s apartment in New York City.

JUSTIN VIVIAN BOND: Well, here we are. Justin Vivian Bond and John Cameron Mitchell. Two queens with three names.
JOHN CAMERON MITCHELL: Do you mind if we talk about Kiki? [Bond created the character Kiki DuRane, an old alcoholic lounge singer who performed an act with her accompanist Herb, portrayed by Kenny Mellman. From 1989 to 2008 “Kiki and Herb” went from playing clubs in San Francisco and New York to performing in a Tony nominated production on Broadway and giving a “farewell performance” at Carnegie Hall to a comeback tour across America and in Europe.] That was such an interesting time for you. I saw you do “Kiki” starting at Cowgirl Hall of Fame in New York – which is kind of the lesbian Applebee’s – and then you went to Flamingo East which was a bar.
JVB: But it had a great room upstairs that had a salon-y feel to it.
JCM: It was like a cabaret room. It had a great balcony that the poet Shannon Hamann once almost threw me off of after one of your shows.
JVB: Mmm. Nice.
JCM: He’s passed away.
JVB: Oh, he has?
JCM: Do you remember him? He was a very talented writer, but was very self-destructive.
JVB: Yeah. Very self-destructive. But I didn’t know he passed away.
JCM: Remember when he was run over by a speedboat in Mexico? That didn’t kill him, but he had to reconstruct his face. He really was brilliant, but he was difficult. Years later, he paid me the ultimate compliment, which was, “Oh, John, you’re so beautiful. I should have fucked you back then.”
JVB: When he still had a face?
JCM: Yeah.
JVB: Wow.
JCM: He was one of the few people I know who was quite comfortably gay but who later in his adulthood, in his 30s converted to Catholicism. Apparently, that was a thing in the early 20th Century with some British writers, too. I think maybe Oscar Wilde and …

JVB: Tony Blair converted to Catholicism late in his adulthood.
JCM: He does seem kind of gay.
JVB: Not that there’s anything wrong with that. But what’s the old joke – gay or British?
JCM: I grew up Catholic. It is a pretty gay religion.
JVB: Well, yes, it is.
JCM: My mom is still disappointed I left the church. I guess I could have become a self-hating priest.
JVB: Well, in a way you are – except for the self-hating part.
JCM: That’s true. Did you think of yourself as a priestess before you hung out with the Radical Faeries?
JVB: Well, I had two uncles who were ministers, so I was raised in the church and always felt perfectly comfortable entertaining in the church. It was the Church for the Brethren of Protestant Pacifist Church.
JCM: Liberal-ish?
JVB: Not particularly. But simple. For instance, when my church first started in the community where I lived, they would spend the first hour of the ceremonies sitting on benches staring at the mountain contemplating nature. So I think that kind of view has affected me.
JCM: That’s beautiful. And church is a great place to nurture your need for attention.
JVB: Well, I never had that much need for attention. I always felt I had too much attention. Being known as a “faggot” since I was 11 years old, I had a lot of attention I didn’t necessarily want. So I learned as I got older to control how I was perceived. It’s about controlling how the attention is paid. I spend a lot of time alone. So, no, I don’t have to have attention … The first time I performed though I was 18 months old because I started speaking very young. I had a speaking part in the Christmas show at my church and I sang. I said, “I can wish you – though I am small – Merry Christmas one and all.” Evidently, it was very well received.
JCM: You shone.
JVB: I shone.
JCM: I was the Virgin Mary …
JVB: Amazing.
JCM: .. in boarding school when I was ten.
JVB: And were you at virgin?
JCM: I was unfortunately. It was a Scottish boarding school and yet no one tried to interfere with me.
JVB: That’s insulting.

JCM: I did have a priest kind of like that one in Doubt – you know, who did fuck with one kid but is he fucking with this kid? They don’t know he just seems to be taking care of that second kid. I had one of those priests who kind of looked out for me because I was real sad and lonely and the only American. He would cook me stuff because I couldn’t eat the food. I mean, it was Scotland in the 1970s. Later I heard he had interfered with some boys.
JVB: I love that expression: interfered. I always wish I had been interfered with, but I wasn’t.
JCM: I’m glad I dodged that bullet at that age.
JVB: Looking back on it, of course, I think it’s probably best that I wasn’t either. But I did have a lover.
JCM: At what age was that?
JVB: From the time I was 11 until the time I was … well … I’m going to save all that for my next book. Speaking of virgins though, when I was in sixth grade this kid asked me if I were a virgin and I said no because I thought if you had become pregnant by God then you were a virgin.
JCM: That was a special category, Justin.
JVB: But I kept saying I had never gotten pregnant by God therefore I was not a virgin. I got a lot of grief for that.
JCM: It really is fascinating going back to all this Catholic stuff that I took such issue with when I turned gay. If I weren’t gay, I probably would have been a priest.
JVB: Because you would get lots of attention.
JCM: Yeah, but it also has to do with the whole having a flock aspect of it. I do like that. I love a flock. I mean Mattachine, the dance club I do in New York with Amber Martin and Angela Di Carlo at Julius in the West Village is kind of like our little revival tent in some ways. We bring in interesting people from the neighborhood – queer-ish, whatever – and get them off their phones and get them to dancing.
JVB: You’re like a shepherd. You have flock. Flocks aren’t so much for me.
JCM: You’re more of a witch.
JVB: Well, yeah, I am a witch. But I am also – what’s the word? – a facilitator. I like facilitating. I like to be the person who is sort of directing the conversation and helping people communicate better with each other. I used to facilitate Queer Nation meetings in San Francisco and I just loved it. I was good at it. I could really direct the convo and what was happening without asserting directly what I thought what I had to say but I really felt like I could ….
JCM: .. influence …
JVB: .. what was happening simply by the way I was able to get people to pay attention to each other. I liked Queer Nation. I loved the whole umbrella term as a trans person and as a not-very-masculine person. I felt there was a broadening of the conversation, a larger group of people. I never felt particularly comfortable in a group of mostly guys.
JCM: We are both the same age – 56 – and came of age sexually right when AIDS hit, which saved us probably. People a few years older than we are were dying. Those who were younger than we are were aware of safe sex.
JVB: You know, when you think about it, there aren’t that many people our age who are gay.

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