Just Announced: Bard SummerScape 2026

Spiegeltent

Justin Vivian Bond

August 8

Add to Calendar2026-08-08 8:00 pm2026-08-08 8:00 pmEDTJustin Vivian Bond

Photo by David Andrako

Fisher Center, Spiegeltent,
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Mx Justin Vivian Bond—Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts from Bard College, 2024 MacArthur Fellow, and patron saint of the Spiegeltent—returns for three performances.

Mx Justin Vivian Bond

Mx Justin Vivian Bond has appeared on stage (Broadway and Off-Broadway, London’s West End), screen (Shortbus, Can You Ever Forgive Me?, Sunset Stories), television (High Maintenance, Difficult People, The Get Down), nightclub stages (most notably a decades-long residency at Joe’s Pub at The Public Theater in NYC), and in concert halls worldwide (Carnegie Hall, The Sydney Opera House). Their visual art and installations have been seen in museums and galleries in the US (Participant, Inc, The New Museum) and abroad (Vitrine, London). Vivian’s artwork is also included in the permanent collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum. Their memoir Tango: My Childhood Backwards and in High Heels (Feminist Press) won the Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Nonfiction. They are the recipient of an Obie, a Bessie, and a Tony nomination, an Ethyl Eichelberger Award, The Peter Reed Foundation Grant, The Foundation for Contemporary Art Grant for Artists, and The Art Matters Grant.

In 2024, Justin Vivian Bond was named a recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship. In 2025, Bard College will award them an Honorary Doctorate of the Arts. They have self-released several full-length recordings: most notably Dendrophile and Silver Wells. In 2022, they released Only an Octave Apart (Decca Records), a critically acclaimed collaboration with Anthony Roth Costanzo, produced by Thomas Bartlett with arrangements by Nico Muhly. As one half of the legendary punk cabaret duo Kiki & Herb, they toured the world and released two CDs: Do You Hear What We Hear? and Kiki and Herb Will Die For You at Carnegie Hall.

Mx Bond has been at the forefront of Trans visibility and activism since the early 1990s. They won an Audie Award for Best Non-Fiction narration for the audiobook Candy Darling: Dreamer, Icon, Superstar, the National Book Critics Circle Award-winning biography by C. Carr. They have a Master’s Degree in Performance Design from Central Saint Martins College in London and have taught performance composition and Live Art Installation at NYU and Bard College. Currently, Viv divides their time between residences in New York City’s East Village and the Hudson Valley.

In December 2019, they made their debut at The Vienna Staatsoper in the world premiere of Olga Neuwirth’s Orlando as Orlando’s child. In 2025, Vivian is scheduled to appear in Complications in Sue, a new opera commissioned by Opera Philadelphia, conceived by Viv with a libretto by the Tony Award-winning writer Michael R. Jackson.

 

 

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