Sarah Franken interview

Sarah Franken is currently performing her stand-up show "Who Keeps Making All These People?" at the Museum Of Comedy in London. We caught up with her to find out more...

Hi Sarah. Could you tell us more about what your show is about?

It's, as the Scotsman declared in their review this year, "a declaration of the primacy of freedom of expression". I dedicate the show in the universal to freedom in all its manifestations, whether that's the freedom to be who you want, think what you want, or even criticise what you want. And in the particular, it is also dedicated to the victims of the Charlie Hebdo massacre.

You're performing the show at the Museum Of Comedy...

It is a lovely room, yes, with much to occupy a historian's mind before showtime.

You're great at impressions and voices. When did you discover you had a talent for that kind of thing?

Very early on at around the age of six. We had no emotional connection in our family, so we had plenty of televisions to meet that filial objective.

I lived next to a big wheat field in Missouri, so I was either watching television or wandering around the field in isolation, talking to myself as if I was a television.

I don't know if I have a favourite voice, but my first impersonation was my father. He terrified me and my sisters, so when he was away I would impersonate him and therefore achieve some metaphorical power over him and diffuse the situation, making my sisters and mother laugh in the process.

You've been performing in Britain for a number of years, but moved over here permanently in 2013. It rains here more than in San Francisco!?!

I prefer the rain. Sunny weather brings the nobs out. Rain and gloom is thinking girl's weather, a comforting meteorological blanket.

I love the satirical historical legacy of this nation. When John Lennon was facing deportation in America, he was asked by a talk show host why he wanted so badly to stay in the US when the government wanted to get rid of him. He responded that he wanted to stay because the US is where the rock and roll came from. Well, that's what I feel about Britain. This is where the comedy came from.

Earlier this year you announced that you had decided to fully transition from being Will to Sarah. How hard was it to announce you were transgender to the wider world?

Well I never said I wanted to fully transition. I've never wanted the operation or even hormones. I just told people I was living as Sarah.

It was a gradual process, really. The Guardian asked for an interview and I agreed - it's funny how, for some reason, I never remember the fact that interviews are made public. So I suppose I only thought about it in retrospect.

I've lost some friendships and damaged some relationships. To be honest, I think some of the effects are only beginning to be felt now. The cumulation of stares and comments, the loneliness, the pervasive nerves, sometimes can be a bit unbearable.

Edinburgh went well for you this year?

I suppose it did go well. The Stand is the most ethical club in all of Britain and I can't speak highly enough of them. I've done quite a bit of traveling in the months following and have written quite a lot. I still yearn to move up north to a smaller, quieter, less expensive town.

Most people, when they transition, try to make a relatively clean break in terms of leaving their old identity behind? Given you're a comedian that has built up a good reputation and following under the name Will over 15+ years - with all the publicity pictures, reviews etc that has come with that - it must be a bit harder for you to have that clean break?

I'm not sure. My comedy style has remained intact. I don't feel hemmed in, in the sense of having to alter my style or even my offstage mannerisms.

I recently shot a couple of promo videos as my old self simply because I had some good ideas and didn't want to have to put on the makeup and wig before filming them. That feels constraining at times, I have to say. The feeling that you have to present an image at all times.

In the immediacy of creating, I can't always be arsed with concerns about appearance or fears that people will say: "wait! Where's Sarah gone to?" That's anathema to a character comedian who necessarily must retain a certain chameleonic nature.

You have some jokes in your show on the topic of being transgender. Could comedy indeed be the best medium via which to educate people who don't know much about the topic?

I'm not sure I want to educate people on that topic. I look at my transgenderism as something incidental to me, like the colour of my eyes or my race. I do jokes about it, to be sure, but more in an autobiographical sense of "look at the shit I have to put up with" or even as a mild form of therapy for myself to not feel so alone with my struggles.

I really want to educate the West about the need to collectively destroy ISIS. If I made my satirical focus solely on my transgenderism, I think that would just be pure narcissism and naval-gazing. I may put up with bigotry in East London, but it's nothing compared to what homosexuals and women suffer in ISIS controlled regions.

You're performing the show across the whole of November. Have you got any plans for how you're going to keep the show fresh each night so you don't get bored of doing it?

Well, one of the great things about being Sarah now is that the necessary bit of admin I open the show with. Explaining for people who still aren't sure if it's a pisstake why I'm appearing before them as Sarah and not Will means that the first five to ten minutes of the show are improvised. That gives me a good chance to work in new anecdotes nightly.

Also, this is the first show in the UK where I'm making considerable use of my talents at the piano and, honestly, I could play piano forever. I could probably quit smoking that way. If I was in a room that had a piano in it and didn't allow smoking and I didn't have to be anywhere else for a week, I reckon I could play right through the withdrawals.

'Sarah Franken: Who Keeps Making All These People?' is at the Museum Of Comedy until the 28th November 2015. Info & Tickets