EDINBURGH 2022: Jordan Gray Q&A

BWW catches up with Jordan Gray to chat about bringing Is It A Bird to the 2022 Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

Tell us a bit about Is It A Bird.

It's an hour of comedy with me and my keyboard, leaping about like a tit and slagging off Batman. It's the kind of "dumb-smart" comedy I love. Childish but carefully crafted. I talk about all sorts, sing about all sorts, and there's a surprise at the end. It's also my first hour in a "big five" Ed Fringe venue so we're coming to PLAY. It's autobiographical, iconoclastic and proper Essex.

Why bring it to Edinburgh?

It's the Holy Grail isn't it. And, yes, that may be a self-fulfilling analogy because, whether it's true or not, we still flock there every year in our thousands. It's also a powerful pressure cooker for shows. My hour is in great shape - but after Ed Fringe it will be a piece of precision engineering.

I also lived for a while in Musselburgh and I love the Scots. I've never felt safer in a major city than I do walking around Edinburgh, as a transgender woman at night.

Where might we have seen you before?

I was the first ever transgender contestant on The Voice in 2016. After that, I side-stepped into comedy and created the recording-breaking webseries Transaction for Comedy Central UK (coming to TV next year). You may have also seen me getting a boob-job on ITV1's 2019 doc series Transformation Street. Ya never know.

Who would you like to come and see you?

Everybody (over the age of 16). That said, it is dirty and sweary (I'm an Essex bird, what do you ****ing expect, ya ****!?). If you like Tim Minchin or Russell Brand, I like to think I'm your cuppa tea. Whether you're inside or outside the LGBT+ community, if you're just as bored of identity politics as I am, come along and let's have some stupid fun together - at Batman's expense.

What would you like audiences to take away from it?

That life is short and fun is fun. Transgender people aren't all tragic figures: some of us are fun-loving mockney cartoon characters that you have a lot more in common with than you'd think

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