Fringe veteran, Alex Franklin returns this August with her new show, Gurl Code. Before travelling to Edinburgh, she chats to Pepper&Salt about Gurl Code and exactly what it takes to bringing chaos to comedy.
What is the elevator pitch for your show?
It’s a show about trans joy. In 2023, I started transitioning medically on hormone replacement therapy, and it’s a show about the happiness I feel from that, and also about, I guess, coming out to people and family, including, like, my dad. And how that went and everything around that. There’s a lot of, transphobia generally in society the past few years, it’s been, ramped up and literally, even today, I just got back, and I was like, “Oh my god, it’s still here.” I wanted to provide something that was showing more of the emotional, happy side of being trans, because a lot of people I’ve talked to are young trans people, and I wanted to do something that helps them and is heartwarming to them and supports them and helps them feel seen and stuff and allows cis people to see a different side of us as a community. I’m just being very truthful and honest about things that have happened to me and experiences I’ve had. And so, because of that, I don’t want to put character in because that feels like a weird break. I’m the character, I’m the best character. I’m pretty funny.
What inspires your musical comedy, what’s song writing process like?
It varies a lot, sometimes I just get like a cool chord progression, and I’ll do something with that. I guess there’s two ways to do, like, musical comedy; you start with the idea, and then you go into the music, or you start the music, and then you go to the idea. They kind of have to match for it to make sense, so the musical tonality has to be the right vibe to fit what the actual song is about, um, because it has to emotionally support it. A lot of Lonely Island songs, where they’ll, in order to set up the juxtaposition of a joke, they’ll have to be like, “Oh, we’re doing a very intense beat underneath,” or “We might be switching between two genres,” so they tie the musicality into the comedy aspect. It kind of depends, I think if I just come up with a cool rhythm, or some sort of structure, I’ll be like, “Let’s do something with that,” and then I’ll work something around that, but if it’s, if there’s an idea I want to do, I just have some rhythms and things in my back pocket, melody structures and things. If it’s an idea that I think that’s funny, I’ll just be like, “maybe I can tie it to this, and put the pieces together.” I kind of just write stuff down to go with it and eventually the piece is sort of set.
How do you blend all of these different styles of comedy together?
By running around a lot. I think different things are cool, I think it’s nice to do loads of different things. You could do a pure stand-up show, but you don’t have to, you might as well just put in, like a weird timeline bit, which I did, like, the first show I did. I’ve got a lot of like powerpointy things, and animated things, small games and stuff. I just think it’s more fun, it’s more entertaining, you just want to get people engaged. I think it’s a nice way to keep people engaged, just spark people’s interest with new ideas all the time. It’s a pain, I mean, it’s like, emphatically the wrong way to do comedy. It’s the hardest, mechanically most intensive way to do comedy, because you have to think about way too much, which is not always good, but when it comes together, it’s really good. It’s new and interesting, and different, but it takes ages for anything to come together because you can’t just be like, “I’ll tell one big story,” it’s instead like, “I’m doing shadow puppets, I’m gonna make the shadow puppets tie into this dance segment for some reason.” Sometimes I successfully do that, sometimes I don’t. Who knows what this year will bring.
“It’s just a cool arts festival, you just get to embrace a lot of creativity in such a condensed manner that you don’t really get to see in other places, and I’m just enjoying it.”
How would you describe Gurl Code?
It’s more, like, to do with when I was younger, I didn’t really feel a sense of identity about myself, which I think a lot of trans people feel. I didn’t really feel like I existed. I guess it’s, just disassociating for a lot of my life and I think because the way we talk about things is often, like, “You feel this, or you feel this, or this is how you demonstrate you are as a person.” When I was younger, I was, what is typically known as, like, anatomically as a boy, so I was like, “Okay, let me learn the various mechanisms of how to like be masculine, or be manly, or a boy,” and so I just kind of learned that without feeling any of them inside, I was just, like, “Oh, I know I have to do this here, and this there, and, like, do this action, or, like, walk like this, or do this, like, sort of motion of the nose, or, like, wash, wash my face like,” and just kind of picking up those things. I was very aware of that. I was very, like, academic about it. I was like, “I am supposed to do this, because that is the thing I’m supposed to do,” and “None of this is natural to me, but I’m aware that’s what I should be doing in these scenarios,” and so it became almost like in my head like a manual what I should do for certain situations. And it’s just essentially the flip of that of being like, how do I, you know, learn the alternative, trying to embrace femininity and stuff, because that’s actually how I feel inside, and how I actually experience, view myself. And it feels like when I embrace that, I feel like a person, like I exist, and I actually feel emotions and things. It’s kind of the math, and it’s also the kind of idea, just I don’t really need to, I don’t have to follow a code as much for it, to be honest. It’s not like a thing I have to follow, which is nice. I just exist, and I feel good about it, and happy.
What are you looking forward to about the Edinburgh fringe?
Every time I’ve done it previously, I’ve done it by myself, which has been, like, economically and fiscally good but an absolute pain. I was a husk of a human the first year I did it because I did like two shows and produced two things, and it was very much not worth it. I think I lost years of my life. So it’s nice to have support this year, and also loads of friends are going, which is kind of cool. It’s just a cool arts festival, you just get to embrace a lot of creativity in such a condensed manner that you don’t really get to see in other places, and I’m just enjoying it. Also, I’m just excited to share the show with people – it feels, it feels dweeby to say – but I am proud, and people seem to like it, and it’ll hopefully make a little bit of a difference, a splash of difference, it feels arrogant to say, but hopefully someone will find it helpful.
What’s in your Fringe survival kit this year?
There’s a pesto pasta thing. I got these jars of this pesto that’s so hard to find at any sort of supermarket, that’s not like a big supermarket, and I probably could have that every day for the rest of my life. Ah, it’s so good. It’s sometimes in co-op, it’s rarely there. If I could just bring, like, a million jars of that, I’d be happy, and I’d be fine.
In Shakespeare, the role of the fool and the king are very distinct, with the idea that a fool can’t be a king and a king can’t be a fool. How do you think this applies to the modern context?
I kind of think people emphasize too much on the role of comedians. I think if you have any sort of response, if you have any sort of audience where people listen to you, you just have a responsibility to do good with it. I think it’s kind of true for whether you’re a higher figure in some company or whatever, or a politician, or a YouTuber or a comedian. And I think it’s almost like a moral responsibility as opposed to the role of comedians that are supposed to speak truth to power. All people are supposed to speak truth to power, I think all people are supposed to be looking out for others and the more vulnerable. Maybe this is because I was raised online at the digital age very much, but when I was younger, it was pretty common for people to, some big creator often like in a YouTube space or on Twitch, whatever, was make fun of some smaller person. And they have, like, millions of followers, and then maybe 10,000 of those followers would go hate on that person, that’s the most hate they’ve ever got in their life, and it really hurts them. I think because I’ve grown up seeing the effects of that on people, and it was a big thing when I was around in my teenage years, just seeing the interactions of people bullying these people by the internet and then a lot of them would make these crazy excuses, being like, “I can’t control my audience,” and it’s like, “Well, you have a responsibility to know what’s going to happen if you do this, you know what’s going to happen if you say this thing or make fun of this person, or do this effect, and you should be aware of that. If you make a mistake, so be it, but you should be aware.” And I think that’s true just for people. People get obsessed with the idea that comedians should be like the arbiters of justice and truth. It’s how people just describe Ricky Gervais or whatever, being like, “He says it as it is,” and it’s, like, “I don’t know, does he? Does he really? Or does he just say what some people, some people who are horrible sometimes think?” I don’t think it’s a comedian’s job necessarily to speak truth to power, but I think it’s your job as a human to speak truth to power, if that makes sense? I think you can be a king and be a fool, I think you can be funny as a king. As long as you get stuff done, it’s fine.
By Katerina Partolina Schwartz
Photo Credit: Rebecca Need-Menear
Pepper & Salt 
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