Being trans can mean a lot of different things, and there is so much beauty in that.

Being trans can be funny, bizarre, fun, outrageous – the experience is unique to every individual. Some days are better than others. Sometimes it feels as if the world is scary, lonely or unwelcoming. It isn’t always easy, but what good thing is?

To me, the best thing in the world as a trans person is meeting other trans people and sharing experiences. Our stories and our voices are worth hearing.

This is something that comedian Anna Piper Scott and producer Olly Lawrence understand intimately. It’s what led them to develop a show celebrating the vast Naarm community of trans and gender-diverse people. 

Image: Anna Piper Scott performing at T4T: A Transgender Showcase at Melbourne Fringe 2023. Photo taken by Millie Gryphon, cropped for website.

The show T4T: A Transgender Showcase is a variety show featuring an entirely trans and gender-diverse cast and crew. Cis people are welcome to attend, but not encouraged.

It is a show that celebrates the entire trans community: our joys and loves, our experiences and our lives.

At last year’s Melbourne Fringe, the show sold out a packed room of over 200 people. It had everything: musicals, drag performers walking on glass, sexy cardinals, love ballads, anatomically correct genital puppets, profound amounts of nudity and more.

The cast changes for each show, spotlighting a variety of singers, drag performers and comedians.

I sat down with Olly and Anna to talk about their show on a hot day at a cafe in Brunswick. 

Simone Anders: How did the idea of T4T come about? What led you to create a space like this?

Olly Lawrence: Anna and I were very much on the same page about wanting to create queer art that had some edge to it: art that didn’t treat queer people like we’re fragile snowflakes.

We can take ‘edgy’ comedy. We do like to poke fun at ourselves, but we also want to be telling stories with compassion and empathy.

Trans people are very good at telling our own stories, you know? Often that’s what cis people want of us: to hear about our lives and our transitions.

SA: Anna, how do you normally navigate performances spaces as a trans comedian?

Anna Piper Scott: I’ll go up to do a 10 minute set, and I’ll have to spend a minute or two explaining what it means to be trans and just define a bunch of terms.

If I don’t tell the audience I’m trans or explain what trans means, some of them will think that I’m a drag queen or a cross-dresser, or that I’m doing a bit parroting women.

Even audiences that are savvy and know what trans means, they still often won’t know what cisgender means. It’s not even that they’re transphobic, they’ve just never learned terms like that.

It’s exhausting and time-consuming; you just always feel like you’re performing with one arm tied behind your back.    

I was thinking that it would be so good to do a show just for trans people, to not have to worry about any of that. I realised that if that would feel that good for me, it would probably feel that way for every other trans performer I know.

I thought it would be a fun idea for a one-off show. When we did it, it turned out to be really special in ways that I could not have predicted.

OL: Some of it was also born from the amount of fun, joy and jokes that we have in our trans friend group, just dicking around together.

The jokes that we make to each other are so funny, and they’re funny to pretty much every other queer person and trans person who has that same context and knowledge.

They should be appreciated as much as the jokes that straight cis men tell about their lives and their wives, which we find unrelatable.

There is so much art that caters to a cis-normative audience, and there’s not much that caters just to trans people. 

Eddie Pattinson performing at T4T: A Transgender Showcase at Melbourne Fringe 2023. Photo taken by Millie Gryphon

SA: How do you ensure joy remains at the cornerstone of each performer’s experience on stage?  

APS: We’re so explicit with the acts. We tell them to do whatever they want, but to do it for trans people and not to think about how cis people would react.

Sometimes people do stuff that’s really sad, really bittersweet, really sexy…

SA: Or all of the above?

APS: All at the same time, literally.

We want it to be a joyful experience overall, but we also want the performers to be able to do whatever they want.

For example, they can discuss feeling sad about being trans without any cis people taking that as regret for their transness.

It’s a space where you can just be whoever you are, without worrying if you’re doing it the right way, or worrying if you’re trans enough, femme enough, masc enough, happy enough or whatever else.

I think that ends up feeling really joyful at the end.

Rosie Rai and Georgie George performing at T4T: A Transgender Showcase at Melbourne Fringe 2023. Photo taken by Millie Gryphon

SA: Is there anything that has surprised you about the audience reception to T4T?

OL: The first-ever season we did was six nights for Melbourne Fringe.

When Anna brought me on board for that project, my initial thoughts were: We’re not going to be able to have big audiences six nights in a row. There’s not enough trans people who are interested in variety shows. Oh gosh, what have we done?

The thing that really surprised me was how big and enthusiastic the audiences were, and how many times people came back.

We would have people come and see the Tuesday show, enjoy it, come and see the Wednesday show, then book for Friday and Saturday as well.

I really didn’t expect that level of reception. I never expected to be selling out venues like the Victorian Pride Centre with a show like this.

APS: With T4T: A Transgender Showcase, for once we’re not coming together to defend our humanity, we’re coming together to celebrate it.

For me as the host, I don’t have a political message when I’m up there. I’m never telling audiences to get to a rally and fight for our rights if there’s one on the next day. They already know.

They’re either already going, or have a good reason not to be there.

SA: Trans people are already very connected as is.

APS: Exactly. I almost have to be like, a priestess or a counsellor or something like that instead. I need to figure out naturally: What is the emotional vibe in the trans community right now? What do they really need to hear?

On the night I attended T4T: A Transgender Showcase, my partner and I watched as a whole crowd gathered together.

Some of us knew what to expect, others had no idea. All we knew is that this was a night only for us.

Anna walked on stage to rapturous applause, dressed in a black dress that flowed behind her like smoke. She acted as our host, our guide, our MC. We gladly gave ourselves over to the experience.

In that moment, it wasn’t just a case of what our community needed to hear, but also what we needed to feel while in that space.

T4T is one of the few spaces in Naarm where we can fully explore the diversity of our love, our care, our rage and our strengths. There were over 200 people in the audience that night – a full house.

This show gives me hope that we as trans people are an audience worth catering to.

T4T: A Transgender Showcase is returning to Melbourne Fringe for one night only!
When: Sunday 13 October, 7:00pm
Where: Festival Hub: Trades Hall – ETU Ballroom.
Tickets: Book here.