It’s been a big three years for Jordan Gray since her Edinburgh smash hit show Is it a Bird? resulted in awards galore, spawning a Channel 4 special and the development of her web series Transaction into a full ITV sitcom. Performing naked on Friday Night Live and “playing the keyboard with a part of the body not traditionally employed for that,” Gray won the hearts of many and the unhinged fury of a vocal few. From “not being able to talk about the death threats for a long time,” Gray has moulded fear into a punchline for this year’s Is That A C*ck In Your Pocket, Or Are You Just Here To Kill Me?
Laughter is cathartic, and Gray wears her ability to brush things off like a rhinestone cowgirl. “I’m a cartoon, and bullets bounce off cartoons,” she shrugs. “I’ve got no agenda apart from being funny. I’m going to do an hour of stand-up, sing some songs, and as I’m a transgender woman I’ll probably talk about that. Oh and that I thought some people were going to try and murder me.”
Gray is a rockstar with the distilled energy of 18 toddlers in a (beautifully tailored) trenchcoat. She’s written two books, released 10 albums and survived reality TV, but it’s in comedy she’s found the magic link. There is universality in her specificity that invites instant connection, from metalhead crowds going wild at Download to her jokes about “experiences they’ve never heard before,” to her recent Soho previews where she was delighted to see about a “20% increase” in trans audiences. “My dream has always been to see transgender people at my shows, nudging each other, going ‘hey, that’s us! We do that!’”
Her brilliance lies in finding the sweet spot between punching down and pointing out the funny grains of truth in stereotypes. It only takes a surface scratch to reveal the absurdity of transphobia. “Sometimes I think that’s why there’s so much anger: when you’ve dug yourself so deep into something clearly ridiculous, it’s harder to let go. I can push forward with ridiculous analogies, but they think I’m serious. They believe I really think that Daylight Savings Day is a reasonable parallel for understanding gender dysmorphia.” Perhaps the problem is that bigots just don’t have a sense of humour.
Gray’s zealous commitment to clowning in our hostile environment feels like an act of resistance. Threats towards trans folk have become hyper-normalised, online abuse shrugged off as inevitable. “I once put it to the test tweeting ‘I’m having a bag of crisps’,” says Gray. “And someone immediately replied with some of the vilest things I’ve ever heard.” It’s a constant background noise, but luckily Gray is louder; “When you know there are people out there who literally don’t want you to be alive, it amplifies that little voice saying ‘shut up, everybody hates you.’ You’re always battling that – thinking ‘oh god, shall I just make jokes about dogs for an hour?’.” She pauses. “Although, to be fair, I think Ricky Gervais has the monopoly on that.”
Under-representation can often result in undue pressure on individuals to speak for their community. Gray is clear that she’s not interested in showing “the trauma everyone expects from work with trans characters.” She’s keen to point out that Transaction’s protagonist Olivia (played by Gray) is “a dickhead. I mean, a dickhead you want to succeed, but definitely a dickhead.” A character who is allowed to be morally ambiguous, in “a sitcom dedicated to people who stack shelves for a living.” She warms to her proclamation: “Sometimes trans people fall over banana skins, and we need that representation as well!” Truly, an intersectional manifesto where we’re all in on the joke.
Jordan Gray: Is That a C*ck in Your Pocket, or Are You Just Here to Kill Me?, Assembly George Square Gardens, 30 Jul-24 Aug (not 6, 12, 19), 9.05pm