Queen-to-King of Comedy
Transgender funnyman opens up about laughing at life
By Sam Adams
http://alibi.com/art/41866/Queen-to-King-of-Comedy.htmlIan Harvie is living proof that comedy and catharsis go hand in hand. Billed as the world's first female-to-male transgender comic, Harvie routinely uses his experiences with discovering gender identity as the basis of his stand-up act. He might be riffing on the nipple sensation in his armpits due to a chest reduction surgery. Or he might be talking about how people mistake him for "the lost f---ing member of Wham!" Harvie's humor is hilariously raunchy, but it's also too sincere and well-intentioned to be deemed self-deprecating.
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How does gender identity play into the type of audience you attract?
Whoever you are as a comic, you have a perspective and that perspective is your identity. So if you're Margaret [Cho] you're probably queer, feminist, political, dirty. If you're Jerry Seinfeld, you're talking about everyday events—which, you know, he admits and Larry David admits the comedy and the show was a lot about nothing. Even that's people's identity. And each of those perspectives draws a certain kind of audience.
The people who are probably the most interested in me are probably queer, liberal—they're not all gender-variant, but they have an interest in gender. Generally you'll draw the people who have an interest in what your perspective is.
