Life Is a Cabaret
Justin Bond performs his life and ours.
by Hilton Als January 10, 2011
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/theatre/2011/01/10/110110crth_theatre_alsABSTRACT: THE THEATRE about Justin Bond. The forty-seven-year-old Justin Bond, the best cabaret artist of his generation, whose latest, eponymous show is at Joe's Pub through January 30th, was born in Hagerstown, Maryland. He spent his life trying on costumes and identities, all of which have come together to form his present identity as a gender-bending, truth-telling performance artist and illusionist. In 1988, after studying theatre arts at a college on Long Island, Bond moved to San Francisco. It was there that he started to experiment with his own ideas of performance. In 1989, he began appearing as Kiki DuRane, a rageful, down-on-her-luck, over-the-hill lounge singer with a sordid past. Kiki was accompanied by a pianist, Herb (the musician Kenny Mellman). Drinking whiskey-and-soda between songs and spouting homilies, Kiki told the truth as she saw it. In 1994, Bond and Mellman moved to New York, and the Kiki and Herb show made it from the back rooms of restaurants to Carnegie Hall, in 2004, and a five-week run on Broadway, in 2006, for which it was nominated for a Tony Award. Bond stopped appearing as Kiki in 2008.
