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Anna Piper Scott knows that she might attract controversy and even hate for her new Melbourne Fringe show, but that’s not a deterrent for the acclaimed comedian and performer. Transphobia, she underscores, is a serious and ongoing issue. “If I don’t say something, who does?”
An Evening with JK is Piper Scott’s response to public figures who have used their platforms to voice anti-trans opinions. It’s Piper Scott’s first play, a two-hander where she plays a version of Harry Potter author JK Rowling in conversation with a trans interviewer.
Comedian Anna Piper Scott will be performing An Evening With JK at Melbourne Fringe.Credit: Wayne Taylor
“If we all stay quiet until it’s safe to talk about it, it’s going to just become more and more unsafe to talk about,” says Piper Scott. “I have to say something now – I think everyone has to say something now.”
The goal isn’t to ridicule Rowling or to poke fun at her – it goes beyond one person. “The show is about JK Rowling, as is clear from the title, but it’s also about the movement, everyone else that she works with.” The character isn’t really JK Rowling, explains Piper Scott, she’s an analogue, and a composite of many.
An Evening with JK aims to get to the heart of anti-trans rhetoric and highlight the dangers Piper Scott sees in some of the viewpoints that are being shared so casually, and to see how someone can end up actively campaigning against an entire group of people.
“It’s about empathy,” says Piper Scott. “It’s definitely not a show that’s going to redeem TERFs [trans-exclusionary radical feminists] or anything like that, but I do want to understand how they’ve gotten where they’ve gotten, because a lot of these people they were originally proper feminists arguing for women’s rights, fighting really important battles around abortion and everything like that. And then suddenly, their entire lives become consumed by this one issue.”
The show has been structured carefully. Piper Scott, a trans woman, will be playing the anti-trans character, while a cis-gender actor will be playing the role of the trans interviewer. This way, she explains, “people’s natural empathy for cis people is placed on the trans character, and people’s natural distrust of trans people is placed on the TERF character, and we’re able to exploit where people’s empathy normally lies. If you consciously try and switch that empathy, you still end up in the same place.”
Choosing an interview format allowed Piper Scott to write a conversation where an anti-trans character has their views challenged in a way that doesn’t normally happen. Generally, she explains, anti-trans campaigners keep things vague, talking about having “concerns”.
“They don’t say what they really mean. And if they were just on stage for an hour, they’re never going to let the mask slip, they’re never going to drop that charade, and tell you what they really believe [or] where their beliefs ultimately end up.”
By digging into exactly why someone might fall down the anti-trans rabbit hole, Piper Scott hopes to stop others from doing the same. “I don’t think empathy is ever a bad thing. And I don’t think understanding an enemy makes them harder to fight – I think actually makes them easier,” she says. “The best way to stop other people from falling prey to the same ideas is showing how they start, showing the flaws in their thinking, and showing how dangerous it is.”
Piper Scott: “The show is about JK Rowling, as is clear from the title, but it’s also about the movement, everyone else that she works with.”Credit: Olly Lawrence
She pauses. “When people get started on TERF ideas they’re too far into it before they realise what the ultimate end goal has to be – and the ultimate end goal has to be the complete elimination of trans people, at least from public life.”
Piper Scott points to the contradictions that pepper all anti-trans rhetoric. “It’s always that trans people are weak and pathetic and degenerate, but they’re taking things over,” she says. “We’re a minority that’s so small that we shouldn’t be catered to – but there’s also so many of us that we’re going to overflow women’s prisons – it’s all these ideas that don’t make sense together at the same time.”
Comedy allows her to take aim at this cognitive dissonance in a way that is accessible and that breaks the tension – if you can make someone laugh, maybe you can shift how they think. “It’s a real, safe way to change minds in a way that you can’t in any other way.”
An Evening With JK isn’t about preaching to the converted – it’s written with a broad audience in mind. Piper Scott hopes that people with anti-trans ideas or who are sitting on the fence will attend and be willing to have their ideas held up to the spotlight and challenged.
Given the subject matter and title of the show, Piper Scott is frank about her security concerns, with risk management and “game plans” already in place.
“But if they come after us, they’re only going to prove us right,” she says. “We’re having the debate in the show that they say they want to have. And if they try and shut the show down, it’s because they’re too scared to let us be heard – and I think that says a lot more than my show could ever say on its own.”
An Evening with JK is on at Melbourne Fringe from October 18-22.
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