Depending on the circumstances, a word like ‘safety’ can take on very different meanings – physically, psychologically, existentially and… comedically? But for a stand up comedian, firing up the body’s flight-or-flight response is all in a night’s work, right?
For Glace Chase – a playwright, performer, comic tornado and self-described ‘trans troublemaker’ – some of the most fear-inducing moments of her life came about during a solo road trip through rural Queensland in the midst of Covid-era lockdowns.
Armed with a GoPro, a selfie stick and a delusional belief she could fix her own life, Chase’s would-be quest to document Australia’s kitschy trail of ‘Big Things’ instead drove her to an emotional breakdown and led her to write a brand new stand up show, Glace’s Big Things, which lands in Melbourne and Sydney for the comedy festival season from early April.
‘I mean, all women understand this, but you’re trained to fear men. Actually, you’re trained to fear the world,’ says Chase, reflecting on her time ‘stuck in the outback as a trans woman, in what can be very intimidating places’.
She adds, ‘I really struggled to get a read on anyone, because once you train yourself to see threat, you see threats everywhere.’
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A seasoned New Yorker nowadays (with an accent to match), Chase has actually spent just as much of her life Down Under as in the US, thanks to having an Aussie father. ‘I had a very bad relationship with Australia before, and New York is really where I felt safe. I felt safe in nightlife and in the clubs, and that was home,’ she says.
However, in an unexpected bait-and-switch, once she learned to let go and ‘wrestle with my working class roots’, Chase ended up having the time of her life in the outback – ‘like an X-rated Eat, Pray, Love… I had a great time!’
Meanwhile, with the US leading the charge when it comes to what one might call the global rise of fascism and conservative politics, Chase is acutely aware of the sense of ‘heaviness’ hanging over everyday life.
‘It’s interesting that in Australia, at that moment in those rural areas, I learned to feel less fear and to sort of embrace myself – and I don’t know if I feel the same can be said for America,’ she reflects. ‘It’s just very heavy over there. Very, very heavy.’
‘Like, I have a bit of a superpower, I can charm … people tend to like me, and it doesn’t really matter where they sit politically or whatnot, even if people find me a bit much. But for people like me, I don’t know if I can say [the same thing happens] in America now.’
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The challenges in the US
As a trans woman, Chase says that the ‘harsh’ political tension in the US is compounded by a sense of being reduced to something less than human. ‘You’re actually, you’re just a concept now,’ she says. ‘You’re being dehumanised. That’s pretty scary.’
While Australia is certainly not blissfully free from the creeping rise of conservatism and restrictions on our freedom of speech (for starters, there are the new hate speech laws in Queensland, the same state where young transgender people have been barred from accessing medical care), the rapidly depleting sense of everyday safety and security in the US has motivated Chase to start spending more time in Australia. And we should be so lucky.
Her play Triple X, which endured multiple Covid cancellations before it was staged in both Brisbane and Sydney to critical acclaim, broke ground as the first mainstage Australian work to feature a trans performer in a trans leading role. She was a headline artist at the Trans Theatre Festival in January, and now with Big Things, her cultural homecoming hits a new stride that will have audiences doubled over with laughter.
Following an initial run at Adelaide Fringe Festival, she’s both ‘excited and intimidated’ to bring the show to ‘one of the best comedy festivals in the world’ – the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. There’s a feeling that, like for many American artists right now (including Chappell Roan), she’ll be able to ‘let go’ and give a better performance in a foreign country than she would on the home stage at this moment in time.
Comedy and joy as resistance
If Chase’s work interrogates safety through the lens of identity and place, fellow New Yorker Ariana Di Lorenzo, who performs as Ariana and the Rose, approaches it through sparkles, feathers, human connection, and the fragile act of showing up at all.
This Brooklyn broad is bringing her new cabaret-style show The Breakup Variety Hour, a glitter-soaked journey through the six stages of heartbreak,to the Aussie comedy festival circuit in Melbourne and Sydney.
‘I think that New York is as progressive as ever. The election of [Democratic Socialist] Mayor [Zohran] Mamdani sort of put a big stake in the ground. I feel very proud to say I’m from New York,’ says Di Lorenzo. However, in the current climate, she says she also weighs ‘what I say and how I talk about it in a way that I never had before.’
‘[But] I feel like it’s my duty, as somebody who has an immense amount of privilege in my country, to stand up for the people that don’t have those privileges,’ she continues. ‘As a performer, something a lot of people in my community are really committed to is making really joyful experiences for people. And as an American, that to me is my commitment right now – to say “this is who we are as people” and “this is our heart”.’
While the cathartic potential of comedy has long been considered ‘the best medicine’, in turbulent times perhaps the Australian comedy festival circuit can also serve as a medium for these artistic ambassadors to facilitate some sorely needed courting of international relations?
‘I think joy as resistance is a real thing, especially when it comes to marginalised communities,’ says Di Lorenzo. ‘Other parts of my life are about protest and resistance, but with doing the show, I aim to create an hour where people can put the world down, where you get to laugh and you get to sit with yourself, especially when I’m touring within the United States.
‘I don’t know how it’ll feel being so far from home and doing doing these things, and how that will make me feel about what’s happening at home.’
While The Breakup Variety Hour channels inspiration from great ‘musical broads’ like Bette Midler, Barbara Streisand and Cher into some witty commentary on modern courtship, Ariana says that touring this show and listening to people’s often ‘horrible’ stories about love and dating has also opened up her perspective on the human condition as a whole – and, surprisingly, she’s discovered some hope.
‘What I have noticed is that people are so open to connection. They just don’t necessarily know where to find it. But people are just as open as ever,’ she says, noting that an over-abundance of technology and a lack of real-life third spaces are big reasons for this.
‘From a human spirit perspective, I think people are very much wanting connection on all sides, [including] men, women, straight, gay, everything – the demographic didn’t matter.’
Cutting the crap and speaking the truth
While Glace Chase’s comedy leans a little more provocative, that drive to connect with people is just as potent. ‘My reason to live is to fuck things up a little. I love being a provocateur,’ says Chase.
‘I actually think that comedy is a great moment just to speak the truth. It’s about getting silly, playful and cutting through the bullshit. In the previous era, comedy was getting quite weighty and kind of lofty, and I think now that we’re back in such a precarious moment, comedy is really great to give people a release.’
When the platform of comedy is harnessed for the right reasons, it can shift the stakes – fear can be transformed into absurdity, anger into satire, and isolation into something like solidarity.
So, can Australian stages be a safe haven for American comics? We can’t say that for sure. But for performers like Glace Chase and Ariana Di Lorenzo’s Ariana and the Rose, they offer something equally vital: a place to connect, and to remind audiences, and themselves, what it means to be human in the first place.
From the armour of showgirl glamour to anecdotes about outback blowjobs, one thing is certain – neither of these performers are playing it safe.
