Winston Tong

Winston Tong is an actor, playwright, visual artist, puppeteer, and singer-songwriter born in 1951 in San Francisco, California. His parents were Chinese exiles displaced by the Communist revolution. Tong appeared on Broadway in 1971 in Jesus Christ Superstar. He later earned a degree in theatre from the California Institute of Arts in 1973, where he studied classical vocals under Marni Nixon. Prior to graduating, he had already taken on outside creative work: in 1969, he was commissioned to illustrate The Dinosaur Coloring Book by Malcolm Whyte, a volume first published by Troubador Press and subsequently by Price Stern Sloan.

Following his graduation from CalArts, Tong built a reputation in the Bay Area through a series of performance pieces including Wild Boys, Eliminations, Frankie and Johnnie, and Bound Feet, the last of which drew loosely on traditional Chinese puppet theater. In April and May of 1978, he presented three solo works at La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club in New York. Wild Boys, listed in the program as a work in progress, incorporated contributions from William Burroughs, Brian Eno, George Olsen, Kawahara, Victoria Lowe, and Tuxedomoon. Bound Feet featured music by Erik Satie, while À Rimbaud drew on texts by Arthur Rimbaud and music by Heitor Villa-Lobos. Tong returned to La MaMa that same year alongside Tuxedomoon bandmate Bruce Geduldig to perform Nijinsky (Fragments), sourced from the diary of Vaslav Nijinsky with music by Frederic Chopin, and a revised version titled Bound Feet (Reformed). His work on Bound Feet earned him an Obie Award in puppetry in 1978.

Frankie and Johnnie was captured on film when Rainer Werner Fassbinder shot the 1981 documentary Theater in Trance at the Theaters of the World Festival in Cologne in June of that year. Geduldig subsequently directed himself and Tong in a La MaMa production of Frankie and Johnnie in 1982.

Tong joined Tuxedomoon in 1977, recording and performing with the group on a sporadic basis. His composition "In a Manner of Speaking," which appeared on the 1985 Tuxedomoon album Holy Wars, was later covered by Martin Gore, Nouvelle Vague, and Amanda Palmer. That same year he released the solo electropop album Theoretically Chinese, a nine-song record produced by Alan Rankine that featured guests including Stephen Morris of New Order, Dave Formula, and Jah Wobble. The album and its singles "Theoretical China" and "Reports From The Heart" were released on Les Disques du Crepuscule. Tong departed Tuxedomoon in 1985. In March 2005, he reunited with the group for two performances in San Francisco, their first shared stage in more than two decades. His career, encompassing both his work with Tuxedomoon and his solo output, is documented in Isabelle Corbisier's 2008 book Music for Vagabonds – the Tuxedomoon Chronicles.