TRANS PEOPLE ARE AWFUL to Make Edinburgh Fringe Debut With Camden People's Theatre
Ros Watt's pitch-black comedy thriller follows Boy, a young trans man with a camera and an axe.
Writer and performer Ros Watt will bring Trans People Are Awful to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2026, a pitch-black comedy thriller about identity, representation and the stories people build around themselves in order to survive.
In a garage in North-East Scotland, Boy, a young trans guy, is preparing to document the final act of his life. Armed with a camera, a vivid imagination and an axe bought on Facebook Marketplace, Boy is covered in blood as he begins recording an “explanation” video for future true-crime fans, laying out his meticulously constructed plan to perform the “perfect” transition - murdering cis men and stealing the body parts he believes will finally make him whole. He knows the surgery will kill him, but it will be worth it. That, too, is part of the plan.
The show unfolds as a grotesque performance constructed on Boy's own absurd terms. Through opera, dance, moral justifications, obsessive scrapbooks and increasingly unstable confessions, Boy attempts to shape the version of himself he wants the world to remember. The result is obscene, theatrical and often very funny, pushing the audience into the uncomfortable position of laughing at something when they're not sure they should.
Just as he's approaching the final kill, the plan unravels and the twisted logic holding Boy's world together collapses. The camera turns off. What follows is a disturbing and yet tender descent: shame, projection and the desperate human need for connection, stripped of the shocking theatrics Boy has used to keep both himself and his audience at arm's length.
Trans People Are Awful repeatedly wrongfoots viewers who arrive expecting either easy provocation or easy reassurance, refusing to flatten Boy into either a monster or a martyr. His actions are horrifying, but the emotional logic underneath them draws on recognisable pressures: isolation, loneliness, dysphoria, internalised ideas about legitimacy and a longing to be understood without qualification.
Combining horror, music, psychological drama, grotesque comedy and theatrical absurdity, the piece deliberately pushes against sanitised notions of what trans stories can be. Inspired by Watt's own experience of being told that being trans means he could never be cast as a murderer due to perceived problematic representation, the show interrogates what happens when marginalised characters are only permitted to be sympathetic, inspirational or morally instructive, and what gets lost when complexity itself begins to feel dangerous.
Trans People Are Awful is a black comedy thriller with a strong narrative engine, a deliberately confrontational sense of humour and a sharp awareness of the way trans stories are consumed, scrutinised and simplified in public life.
Trans People Are Awful has been awarded one of only five prestigious Shedload-of-Future Funds to make this Edinburgh show, made possible by Francesca Moody Productions (the producers of Fleabag and Baby Reindeer), and generously supported by Multitude Media, Joe Lycett, Nish Kumar, Plosive, and Mick Perrin Worldwide.
Trans People Are Awful performs 5th to 31st August (not 17th and 24th) at Pleasance Courtyard's Bunker One at 15:20.
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