A stranger attacked Travis. She didn’t get mad - she got herself a hit show

2 months ago 16

One morning in April 2016, Travis Alabanza, a Black, trans woman, was walking across Waterloo Bridge in central London when a man hurled a hamburger at her and yelled a transphobic slur.

Shocked, scared and humiliated, Alabanza stood with a stranger’s food sliding off her shoulder while as many as 100 witnesses did nothing. Not one confronted the attacker nor consoled Alabanza.

“I was 20 at the time,” she says. “They’d probably call it a drag queen now, but I had far worse makeup skills than any drag queen I know. I was always wearing these big, bold outfits. I used to look a bit like an art teacher on acid.

‘We make up a really small percentage of the population but we make up so much of people’s imagination.’

“At the time I’d been experiencing so much hate crime left, right and centre. So to me, it wasn’t like this was anything unique. I genuinely think if I didn’t have a bit of the burger on my shoulder, I would have been like, maybe I was hungover and imagined it.”

But she hadn’t imagined it and neither could she forget the incident. Ultimately, the performer responded in the way she knew how, and two years later her debut show, Burgerz, premiered in London before going to the Edinburgh Fringe and touring internationally. A one-person show combining home truths, audience participation, burger-flipping and lots of laughs, Burgerz won the Total Theatre Award at Edinburgh and won rave reviews.

Travis Alabanza channelled her emotions into a hit show.

It opens this week at Carriageworks, as part of the Trans Theatre Festival and Sydney Festival, before heading to Melbourne’s Malthouse Theatre as part of the Trans Theatre Festival later this month.

“It was kind of the absurdity of the burger that made me want to turn it into a show but it was also how no one did anything,” says Alabanza. “Everyone just carried on. Carried on walking, carried on moving.

“That really haunted me. I know people saw because he shouted really loud but we’re so disconnected that in that moment no one offered any help or any comfort. And I just was like, ‘I need to make something about this. It doesn’t feel right. I need to archive this’. But I don’t like just retelling a story. I find that really boring. ‘How do I make this something that feels powerful, that feels fun, that feels like kind of getting over it, but in a way that I know how’.”

Alabanza’s anger at her attacker (white and presumably sober at 10am) has mellowed to the point where she can even begin to imagine he might himself be imprisoned by his own limitations.

“I don’t think the person that threw the burger at me felt good,” she says. “I don’t think you feel good if you throw burgers at someone. I don’t think you’re feeling good if you yell a slur. I don’t think you feel nice when you go to sleep.

“Trans people trigger something in other people, whether it’s desire, or misplaced fear or is it freedom? So many men whisper to me after the show ‘I’ve always wanted to dress up’ or, ‘Oh God, I wish I could do that’. And I turn to them and say, ‘You can’.

“We make up a really small percentage of the population but we make up so much of people’s public imagination. There’s a fascination with us maybe because of what we’re deciding to reject. It takes a lot to be trans and out.”

In person, Bristol-born Alabanza is great company; thoughtful and articulate and with a wicked sense of humour.

“I think that’s the way you’ve got to deal with a lot of this stuff is to be able to joke,” she says. “I’m also British and we can only really say one earnest thing per day.”

‘We want a real basic right to live and walk outside safely and transition how we want.’

So, what response is Alabanza hoping to provoke in people who come to her show?

“I want them to feel like they can step up and do something when they see things happen,” she says. “But I also guess I want them to understand that every day trans people go outside, there’s a risk. My thing is – and it sounds a bit corny kumbaya but I promise it’s not a Disney show – I think we’re more alone than we should be.”

Personally, Alabanza says she is exhausted by the culture wars and the role trans people are forced to play in them.

“We’re debating trans people until the cows come home. We’re out here going, ‘What bathroom are we going to use? What sport we’re going to play?’. If you listen to us, we want a real basic right to live and walk outside safely and transition how we want. We can’t even walk outside safely. Imagine that.”

Burgerz is at Carriageworks, Redfern, from January 7 to 18; Malthouse Theatre, Melbourne, January 21 to 31.