None of this came as a surprise. Not the jokes about sex parties, Harry Potter, losing civil rights, dildos, and Dungeons and Dragons. Not the tattoos, the self-cut bangs, the white tank tops. Not the standing-room-only venue packed with friends, lovers, partners, exes, gender-affirming surgery fund donors, parasocial internet fans, allies, and eggs. Not that I was surrounded by the most transgender people I’ve ever seen in one contained space.
In some ways, the standup comedy show T4T’s Third Anniversary Spectacular beautifully met expectations. In other ways, it transcended them. 91 transgender comics — including James Tom, Sabrina Wu, Nico Carney, and Esther Fallick — made history, each performing one-minute sets in the largest all-trans standup show to date.
The fast pace, the sold-out Brooklyn crowd, and the survival need for joy while the American government tries to destroy any semblance of safety for trans people ignited The Bell House with endless cheers.
“We don’t need to talk about all of the fucked shit happening in the world to us,” said Rose Tablizo, a co-producer and co-host of T4T. “We’re in the middle of Pride Month. We just want to laugh and enjoy each other’s company.”
And, laugh we did. Transgender inside jokes sent cackles rippling through a crowd of people who totally get it. By “it,” I mean new genitals, new pronouns, new names, hormone replacement therapy, getting boobs, removing boobs, coming out to various levels of understanding, and the beauty, weirdness, and horniness of trans relationships.
Some comedians broke out of classic trans comedy. Jess Henderson invited the crowd to scream collectively for 30 seconds straight. Max Higgins nerded out on the Roman Empire. Kevin Wingertzhan brought out a squirrel puppet named Melvin, who turned out to be a transmedicalist.
“Transgender people are inherently the most creative people on earth,” Tablizo said. “It’s just so exciting to gather this many trans people together and watch [them] do something crazy.”
In the rapid-fire chaos of one-minute standup sets, the comics joked about nearly everything trans people in America might care about — including the current state of New York and national politics — without sending the crowd into a depressive spiral.
“You’re trying to fuck the mayor?!” asked Jonnea Herman in reference to Zohran Mamdani’s Trans Community Town Hall, when someone asked the New York City mayoral candidate what he thought about practicing non monogamy.
Other comedians found humor in the absurdity of darker topics, like Israel’s genocide against Palestinians, Trump’s mass deportation efforts, and trans people losing their rights. Levity alleviates the struggle against evil. As does mutual aid, which T4T understands: Tablizo passed a top hat around the audience like a church collection basket, gathering $300 of donations for Black trans people in the U.S. through the Okra Project.
Instead of a church choir, the up-and-coming indie punk duo Um, Jennifer? served as the house band, playing the comedians offstage when their allotted minute was up. This has become an annual tradition for the trans rockstars. One half of the duo, Fig Regan, is college friends with a couple of the T4T founders and roped the band into the gig.
Um, Jennifer? uniquely got its musical start in the queer comedy scene at open mics like Gender Experts. Elijah Scarpati, the other half of the duo, said he didn’t enjoy watching comedy until he started playing shows with trans comedians.
“It’s just a really, really cool community of really awesome, funny, smart, talented trans people,” Scarpati said of T4T’s extended universe. “So, I feel really honored to be a part of this night. It’s like, my favorite thing we do all year.”
T4T normally happens monthly, for free, at the much-smaller Metropolitan Bar. Comedians Ella Yurman and Terrance Dugan started the show in 2022, carving out a warm community space for trans comics big and small to work on their craft. Tablizo has been involved since the beginning as the main tech guy.
Ever since their first anniversary, they’ve invited every comic who has performed with them at Metropolitan, making each annual Pride Month spectacular bigger than the last. This year, some comedians came from out-of-state, traveling from North Carolina and Massachusetts to perform.
During last year’s anniversary, Yurman stepped down to focus on her popular late-night YouTube show Going Down, and Dugan left shortly after. Yurman said that, even at the beginning, she wanted T4T to exist beyond her as a bastion of New York City’s trans and comedy scenes. Since she and Dugan left the show, Yurman said, T4T is growing and thriving under the production of Tablizo and fellow co-host, co-producer, and comedian Sunny Laprade, who got to know the crew after performing with them at Metropolitan.
“It really does feel like watching my child…I don’t know if go off to college, but certainly graduate middle school,” said Yurman, who spent this year timing the comics onstage.
If that’s true, the anniversary show was the middle school graduation of the century. After the finale, when each of the 91 comedians returned to the stage to dance and karaoke to “The Most Wanted Person In The United States” by half-trans hyperpop superstars 100 gecs, the audience buzzed with lingering excitement at the post-show smoke session outside The Bell House.
One could overhear folks say things like, “That was one of the best nights I’ve ever had,” and “Everyone’s talking about how much of an institution this is,” and “This is sick as fuck.” I spoke to a longstanding fan of the show named Austin, who said, “It was one of the most unique and interesting shows I’d been to in a long time…T4T is amazing, and I love their anniversary shows!”
The success of this year’s anniversary spectacular at a legendary venue — where even cis people show up — proves that the event isn’t just a great trans comedy show. It’s a great comedy show, period.
“It’s very easy for cis comics, and especially cis straight comics, to dismiss T4T as being like…a queer thing,” Laprade said. “And something like this really shows people like, it is a queer thing, but that’s not some kind of negative against it. It’s a queer thing that actually is doing really cool legitimate shit, and I would love to see you sell out The Bell House.”
For the after party, the queers flocked to Park Slope’s lesbian joint Ginger’s Bar, where they cruised, played billiards, caught up with exes, and gossiped with friends in classic trans fashion.
Now, the organizers are celebrating another epic event and finishing working their way through an exhilarating but exhausting Pride Month. Eventually, though, Laprade and Tablizo said they want T4T to be so financially stable that they can quit their day jobs. They’re always scheming about how far the show can go.
“What’s next? Brooklyn Steel, and then Madison Square Garden, and then the moon,” Laprade said. “And then, T4T for president 2028.”
