A few months ago, as I was leaving the Elysian Theater in Los Angeles, I noticed something unusual. When a comedy set is over, I’m used to seeing audiences file out of the venue looking mildly relieved to be free. But the people at Trans-It Girls, a show put on by Hayden Johnson and Nori Reed, were red-faced and keening with laughter, repeating favorite jokes from the night’s performance to one another as they headed home. That’s for good reason: Johnson and Reed’s comedic collaboration is perfectly pitched, their rotating cast of special guests (which has included John Early, Hannah Einbinder, and Aparna Nancherla) always delivers, and their shiny, often scanty onstage looks never fail to inject a bit of capital-F fashion into the proceedings.
Vogue spoke to Johnson and Reed about performing with “allies,” their rented-clothing sponsorship dreams, and their live show at the Bell House in Brooklyn on July 13.
Vogue: Where did the inspiration for the show come from?
Hayden Johnson: Well, I think it all came together because Nori wanted to take an acting class, and I was like, “Oh, I would love to take an acting class with you.” And from there, we sort of realized that we had a little bit of chemistry and wanted to work on something together.
Nori Reed: Yeah, it was a trans acting class, and we really bonded, because on the very first day of class, they sent us to the wrong location. We had to Nancy Drew our way over to the right place and be like, “What’s going on?” We were the only two comedians in the class, and they were very much like, “You two are funny. You’re funny, goofy, girls…”
Johnson: “…Y’all are crazy.” We also weren’t told that we needed to prepare monologues for the first day, so Nori and I just did part of our stand-up sets for an audience of trans actors. It went great.
Reed: Then we started to hang out more outside of class and were like, “Wait, we’re both stand-ups, why don’t we do a show together?” As two trans people, we really wanted to do a show that was unapologetically trans and for a trans audience, because a lot of times—as a trans comedian—you get used to the idea of, Okay, it’s not going to be for trans people, it’s going to be a primarly cis audience. We wanted to make comedy that was first and foremost processing what it’s like to be trans in this industry—in an absurd and comical way, for a trans audience.