Mary Jane French Has Nothing To Prove

I’m going to start this arti­cle in a sim­i­lar fash­ion to how Mary Jane French has had to start her stand-up sets for years: Mary Jane is a com­ic; she’s fun­ny; and she’s trans.

Now, let’s start from the begin­ning, shall we? French was the youngest in her fam­i­ly. (Are you sur­prised? You shouldn’t be. It’s pret­ty com­mon among come­di­ans.) As such, she wasn’t allowed to watch the more mature com­e­dy stuff that her old­er sibs were watch­ing. So, her pur­suit of stand up came from a place of hav­ing some­thing to prove — or being a ​“try­hard,” as she puts it. Plus, she did some the­ater in high school and was a self-pro­fessed Simp­sons stan, so the come­di­an ele­ments are all adding up here. ​“Through­out high school, when I start­ed get­ting into stand up, I would repeat any bit that I could,” she recalls, which helped her real­ly get the mouth­feel for joke-telling. By her senior year of high school, she start­ed hit­ting the stage. Well, just one stage, once a week, every week. She’d dri­ve thir­ty min­utes from her home in North­ern Vir­ginia, to a mic on the out­skirts of the DC scene. Look­ing back, she admits that she was a bit ​“self-shel­tered” even then, not yet com­fort­able with dri­ving too far out, but that mic was her com­fort­able perch to even­tu­al­ly jump from.

Real­ly, French has been doing stand up her entire adult life, though her com­e­dy has changed dra­mat­i­cal­ly over the years. “[S]tandup was … how I learned how to inter­act with the world around me in a lot of ways,” she con­cludes. ​“Ear­ly on … I was very angry and dys­phor­ic at the time and very yell‑y,” she states before adding wry­ly, ​“I’m still yel­ly, but now I’m like hap­py yell‑y.” For con­text, it wasn’t until after her sec­ond year of com­e­dy that French acknowl­edged her gen­der (after years of repres­sion and dis­so­ci­a­tion) and began her tran­si­tion. She’s thank­ful for that pro­gres­sion, though: With two years of com­e­dy already under her belt to bol­ster her, she ​“sud­den­ly went from doing like sil­ly, absur­dist bits, pure­ly by virtue of the fact that I did­n’t have life to draw from, real­ly. And then sud­den­ly, I had this real­ly impor­tant thing to talk about,” she mus­es. She was ready and rar­ing to talk about iden­ti­ty, and she was pre­pared to be fun­ny doing it.

In hind­sight, French is grate­ful not only for the sup­port sys­tem and resources she had, but also for hav­ing standup as a cop­ing out­let dur­ing the ear­ly tran­si­tion process. ​“That’s a peri­od of hav­ing to accept a lot of things that you’ve spent your whole life try­ing not to accept, and hav­ing to reverse some of the pro­gram­ming that you’ve inter­nal­ized. And I think com­e­dy def­i­nite­ly helped me process a lot of those feel­ings,” French reflects. In fact, she views her two self-released albums as ​“scrap­book diary pieces,” from very spe­cif­ic points in her tran­si­tion. Indeed, the first album, Beard­ed Woman — which French fond­ly describes as ​“just like thir­ty min­utes of me scream­ing” — was record­ed two weeks before French began tak­ing hor­mones. Her sec­ond album, Live at Gallery Five, was record­ed two weeks before she under­went bot­tom surgery. Of course, she did not record these albums so ear­ly in her com­e­dy career for any sort of pride­ful rea­son. Rather, the albums were a way of doc­u­ment­ing mate­r­i­al that was about to lose its rel­e­vance to her; even today, she’s grate­ful for those keep­sakes of jokes that got her through tough times. ​“They are real­ly like per­son­al scrap­books for me in a lot of ways,” she says.

French came out in 2014 — before Cait­lyn Jen­ner had come out, but right around the time that peo­ple were becom­ing acquaint­ed with Lav­erne Cox. In some respects, French con­sid­ers this tim­ing pret­ty for­tu­nate: “[Being trans­gen­der] was like an inter­est­ing thing, and so I got a lot of atten­tion for it,” she states. That being said, she great­ly prefers the greater aware­ness that audi­ences have today. ​“For years, I had to be like, ​‘I am trans­gen­der. Let me explain what that is to you because oth­er­wise you’re gonna keep look­ing at me cock­eyed and I can’t talk about any­thing else,” French recalls. In fact, when she first start­ed tran­si­tion­ing, she plain­ly noticed how pre­vi­ous­ly sol­id open­ing bits stopped work­ing ​“because peo­ple would sort of just be like look­ing at me side­ways … like, ​‘Is this a char­ac­ter? What’s going on here?’” Now, she appre­ci­ates being able to men­tion that she’s trans with­out the grandiose expla­na­tion. (You can imag­ine how much mic time that eats up.)

After liv­ing in Rich­mond for five years (for col­lege … but also for com­e­dy), French made the cross-coun­try move to Los Ange­les. Hav­ing only ever lived in Vir­ginia, she want­ed to try her hand at liv­ing some­where else; more sub­con­scious­ly, she need­ed to prove to her­self that she could. Tru­ly, one of the curs­es of being a come­di­an is that there’s a con­stant expec­ta­tion for you to make the big move to one of the two com­e­dy mec­cas — New York or LA. What French soon dis­cov­ered was that, once you get to LA, peo­ple make a lot of assump­tions about your goals as a com­ic. They assume that you want to break into the club scene, or impress ​“X, Y, or Z enti­ty.” But French knew she wasn’t inter­est­ed in those things; she wasn’t even inter­est­ing in mak­ing her liv­ing from com­e­dy. ​“It’s hard not to inter­nal­ize that [sen­ti­ment of need­ing to make a liv­ing from com­e­dy] … [but] I am way more inter­est­ed in hav­ing my moti­va­tion for all of this be a weird com­pul­sion and a labor of love, as opposed to the very nor­mal com­pul­sion of ​‘I got­ta eat,’” she says.

Instead, French found that she’s way more inter­est­ed in the DIY, indie breed of shows than the club scene. Slow­ly, she real­ized that here she was pay­ing for the exor­bi­tant cost of liv­ing near LA (not even in LA prop­er), when she wasn’t even inter­est­ed in the max­i­mum grind that so many come to LA for (which we see here in Austin too, as comics hus­tle to hit four or five mics per night). Final­ly, when the lock­down slowed every­thing to a halt, the true epiphany hit: French need­ed bal­ance; she want­ed to have and keep friends that weren’t all comics; she want­ed the time and ener­gy for activ­i­ties oth­er than work and com­e­dy; she want­ed the mon­ey to do fes­ti­vals — her favorite thing in com­e­dy. Real­iz­ing that she had spent her two and a half years in LA day­dream­ing about build­ing up the Rich­mond com­e­dy scene, she made the deci­sion to return. After see­ing comics con­tin­u­al­ly skip over Rich­mond for shows, even when it’s on their route from North Car­oli­na to DC or Bal­ti­more, she felt deter­mined to weave the city into the nation­al com­e­dy scene. ​“It’s a real­ly great city that is worth stop­ping over,” she affirms.

Apart from get­ting comics to see Richmond’s mer­it, French doesn’t feel as though she has some­thing to prove any­more. Instead, her pas­sion lies in pro­duc­ing her own shows. ​“I just make things hap­pen on my own because I have a less-than-great rela­tion­ship with try­ing to seek approval that nev­er makes me feel good about myself,” she says. Hav­ing gone to LA and learned the lessons it had to offer, French knows exact­ly what she wants — to start per­form­ing reg­u­lar­ly (when it’s safe to do so), to dust off the cob­webs on her mate­r­i­al, and to record her first ​“album-album, as opposed to [an] I‑want-to-doc­u­ment-some­thing album,” as she earnest­ly put it.

Back in the city she loves, French feels per­fect­ly poised to go after her goals. That is proof enough for her, so it’s proof enough for us; stick it in the pudding.

Want to know more about com­e­dy in Rich­mond, Vir­ginia? Mary Jane’s rec­om­men­da­tions for comics to check out from Rich­mond include: Francesca Lyn, Patrick Buhse, Tom Hall, Ran­dolph Wash­ing­ton, Jr., Jacob McFad­den, Amber Hen­drix, Lucy Boni­no, Bran­don Beswick, Tyler Bow­er, and Mon­ty Giles.

If you’re in Rich­mond, Mary Jane rec­om­mends check­ing out the small scene which she’s hop­ing to help build up. The Rich­mond scene, while small brings out lots of tough audi­ences, which she’s found makes comics stronger per­form­ers when they per­form at fes­ti­vals or tour­ing in oth­er big com­e­dy scenes.

Fol­low Mary Jane

• Web­site — Mary​Jane​French​.com
• Link­tree — link​tr​.ee/​M​a​r​y​J​a​n​e​F​rench
• Twit­ter — @MaryJaneFrench
• Insta­gram — @maryjanefrench // @traversecomedy
• Face­book — Face​book​.com/​M​a​r​y​J​a​n​e​F​rench

Mary Jane can be seen and heard:

• Top Down Com­e­dy Show­case — August 30^th at Bot­toms Up Pizza
• Femmes the Rules podcast/​live show 
• Impor­tant Con­ver­sa­tions Over Fruit Chews (Sea­son 1) podcast/​live show
• Spe­cials — Beard­ed Woman and Live at Gallery 5 avail­able now