In 2016, Travis Alabanza was minding their own business, walking down Waterloo Bridge in the heart of London when suddenly, without warning, a stranger hurled a burger at their head and shouted a slur.
Hundreds of people must have seen it happen. But as Alabanza stood there – shocked, but not entirely surprised, with mayonnaise smeared across their dress – nobody stopped to help them, or to ask if they were okay.
From that moment, Alabanza – an acclaimed British writer, performer and theatremaker – became obsessed with burgers. How they are made, how they feel, how they smell, and how they travel through the air. That senseless act of transphobic hate became the impetus of their award-winning show, BURGERZ. A decade on, hundreds more people around the world now know what happened to Alabanza that day – and these audiences are invited to ask: What would you do differently? What will you do differently?
BURGERZ review – quick links
Out of the bathroom and into the fryer
If the name Travis Alabanza sounds familiar to you (and given you’re the type of person who is reading this review, it might), you may have seen the award-winning Australian tour of Overflow – the critically-acclaimed play penned by Alabanza, which centres on a young trans woman trapped in a public toilet cubicle. (If not, perhaps you saw them when they opened for Alok Vaid-Menon‘s Comedy + Poetry Tour in 2022, or maybe you read their memoir, None of the Above: Reflections on Life Beyond the Binary.)
Overflow, featuring a much tighter script and shinier production, delivered a hilarious and emotionally-devastating window into the trans experience (while also exploring who’s allowed in the ladies’ loo, too). Meanwhile, BURGERZ is something else entirely – quirkier, funnier, more accessible – but no less profound.
A surreal twist on a live cooking show
In a sort of surreal twist on a live cooking show, Alabanza emerges from what appears to be a huge wooden shipping crate and invites a (consenting) audience member to join them on stage to recreate the burger that hit them in the face that fateful day. The act of constructing the burger becomes a process of deconstructing everyday acts of transphobic violence. In asking a stranger for help, Alabanza transforms an incredibly isolating event into a chance for connection. It happened on a bridge; this show builds bridges. The metaphors write themselves.
The staging is full of surprises. Colourful and adaptive, including streaks of bright pink packing tape that glow under the stage lights, the set features a functional mini-kitchen amongst an assortment of cardboard boxes. However, it is Alabanza’s deeply personal performance that is the secret sauce here. Hilarious, adaptive, confessional – they have the magnetic stage presence and sharp wit of a stand-up comedian at the top of their game, and their writing is all the more powerful when it comes straight from the source.
Words like ‘unique’ get thrown around a lot – but BURGERZ is genuinely unlike any other night at the theatre. It’s a more than worthy hero piece for the inaugural Trans Theatre Festival, which now lands at Melbourne’s Malthouse Theatre following an enthusiastically embraced run at Carriageworks in Sydney.
A happy meal for heated times
It goes without saying that, in the years since the burger incident, the world has only become a scarier place for many transgender people, legislatively and socially. (Let alone for a gender-nonconforming, trans-feminine person of colour who doesn’t neatly fit into a box.)
And yet, Alabanza offers an olive branch. They offer their on-stage guest a drink, a comfortable chair and an approachable place to listen, learn, and ask questions (when they aren’t sporadically detouring into monologues and other theatrical surprises). It’s more insight than a lot of people get into the trans experience (of one person), and probably more than a lot of people are entitled to.
BURGERZ has the potential to reach someone with misguided, even hateful views about the trans community. It’s a chance to discover that Alabanza isn’t some tedious ‘social justice warrior’ who’s poised to attack as soon as you use the wrong language. Alabanza, like most people, is just someone who wants to feel safe when they’re making their way home at night. Preferably without having to second-guess walking out of the house in the clothes they feel most comfortable in, and ideally, wearing hot-pink eyeshadow to match the ensemble.
A master of light and (throwing) shade
Alabanza is also a charming hostess. Yet, in all the fuss they make over ensuring the comfort of their ‘guest’, they’re making a point. Why should it be up to them, a member of multiple demonised minorities, to go to such great effort to make others feel comfortable?
Why should they have to create an entire theatre show just to have people believe what happened to them? To believe the micro and macro acts of violence they face on a regular basis? Why should they have to stand on stage and divulge intimate details about their identity and their body and the pressure to conform, for people to understand that they are a human being worthy of respect?
Like all of history’s best queer storytellers, Alabanza is a master of balancing light and (throwing) shade. BURGERZ sandwiches all these juicy layers into a distinctively delicious morsel of theatre (and coaxes a few salty tears from the audience for seasoning). Go on, take a bite. It’s good for you.
