Tranny roadshow to stop in Bloomington

The Tranny Roadshow starts its tour this week with a stop in Bloomington on Friday.
The performance group consists of six transgender performers bringing a range of talent, including Dallas-Marie Spitzer, an acoustic folk-rock musician; Kit Yan, a slam poet; and Adelaide Windsome, a puppeteer who infuses politically charged viewpoints into her puppets.

The Tranny Roadshow began in 2005 when organizer Jamez Terry and his co-organizer, who uses the stage name Kelly Shortandqueer, created the performance group.  Now, Terry wants to show audiences the diversity of the transgender community.

“You can’t boil us down to our genders,” he said. “I’m not only trans, I’m a writer and a fiddle player.”

The diversity of group members reinforces Terry’s mission to dispel old notions that tie the transgender community exclusively to gender issues. The age of the performers ranges from early 20s to mid-60s. They are racially diverse and hail from different regions of the country. Some performers are single, while others are married.

Steven Stothard, the events coordinator for Boxcar Books where the Tranny Roadshow held its first Bloomington performance in 2005, took the group up on its offer to perform at the store during its Midwestern tour this year.  

When the Tranny Roadshow performed at Boxcar Books three years ago, Stothard was only a volunteer at the store, but he remembered the troupe’s energetic performances.

Since then, the Tranny Roadshow has performed one other time in Bloomington, making this Friday’s show their third performance in town.

Stothard believes the troupe’s mission is compatible with Boxcar’s own mission.  He said the crew at Boxcar Books can relate to the Tranny Roadshow performers; both groups are considered outside of the mainstream.

“We share a mission of social justice for marginalized groups of individuals, whether that be transgendered folks, prisoners or immigrants,” he said. “That’s exactly the kind of work and events we should be promoting.”

Spitzer joined the Tranny Roadshow in 2005 to perform acoustic folk music she wrote. A senior at Central Michigan University, Spitzer also believes in using the Tranny Roadshow as a vehicle to challenge audience’s perspectives on the transgender community.

“The media slants us as this weird combination of sideshow freak and sex worker,” she explained. “I hope people unfamiliar with the trans community see that we’re normal people and performers and artists, not the sensationalized caricatures that are brought to us every day on TV shows in the afternoon.”

Spitzer added that the transgender community contributes to art and performance more than other communities because art functions as a way for them to work through the stress and confusion created by the media. In her case, she was drawn to music because she craved the creative release and escape from the mainstream.

“Living in a world that constructs everything in a dichotomy is stressful at times,” she said. “The guitar lets me relieve stress and confusion and work through issues and problems I face.”

Spitzer’s frustration with living in a society that perceives things in black and white, or in male and female, is one reason organizations in Bloomington have welcomed the Tranny Roadshow and its mission, she said. The radio show BloomingOUT was one of the event’s sponsors, along with GLBT, IU Women’s Students Association and others.

Carole Fischer, a producer at BloomingOUT, said the show is innovative for the Midwest because it attacks the traditional distinction between male and female.

“They address the sort of mess our mind falls into when we’re trying to move past the binary message,” she said. “A lot of people here feel queasy in their stomach when they have to deal with that.  And the Tranny Roadshow slaps you upside the head with it. Gently.”