Finding Gender Euphoria Through the Movement of Improv w/ Meggie Gates
“As I started my improv journey, I found more than just a community of people. I found what it means to be “gender queer.””
Meggie Gates is a Chicago based comedian and writer. Their work has appeared in Belladonna comedy and Reductress. They have performed at iO, Second City; and the Annoyance Theater.
We started Bedtime Slugs out of college. Leaving the comfort of college life behind in Iowa City, starting improv in Chicago seems like a feat best handled with friends, the kind you carry year to year with people chasing the same insane dream as you. Once Cara moved, we were all set. Elsie decided the name, Laura made branded mugs, and Elena and I brought the spirit.
In 2017, at the same time as performing with Bedtime Slugs, I auditioned for a student program at pH,, a now defunct theater, and got into a cohort of people also looking to start their improv journey in the windy city. For a year, we practiced everything that should be covered on stage: movement, combat, characters, accents. I grew close to strangers I performed with every week before heading out to perform with my best friends in some other part of town. I passed shops with brilliant lights in Andersonville and watched signs go out when it was late outside. Street signs flickering on and off. On and off.
Eventually I changed too.
It was 2019 when I realized I didn’t feel at home in my body. Yes, adhering to Western European beauty standards had always made me feel too fat or too skinny depending on the day, but this felt like a different body dysphoria, one that couldn’t be changed by counting calories. I began wearing backwards hats, the first step into queerland, then started wearing boxer shorts, swaggering about town with something outside my comfort but within my boundaries.
The month before my big show with Bedtime Slugs was a show with my cohort at pH. I stepped into a scene with Axel so naturally, we fell into a rhythm of good buddies, a pair of pool partners shooting the shit at a bar. I dropped my voice as people do when playing machismo men and felt confidence radiate across the stage, an absolute positivity rushing over my body. I made that space my runway, often talking over my partner at my own expense but I didn’t care. In that moment, I wanted nothing more than to be the character I had created, both on and off stage.
I remember what I was wearing the day the Bedtime Slugs performed at the Laugh out Loud theater. We were in a competition show against a team of all men who we, objectively, blew out of the water. Despite losing, we delivered an A+ performance that culminated in a scene where we, as men, commented on female issues at the expense of women. We often did this after that show, blowing our frustration out by constructing scenes outside of our gender. It killed every time and every time, I turned my hat backwards to get into character, a reflex that felt reflective of my entire life. Sure, it wasn’t exactly the “male idol” I’d like to portray myself after, some guy named Chad I’d thought up on off the spot, but it wasn’t unnerving like the hyper feminine portrayal of being type casted into a sister or mother yet again. It felt powerful. Not because masculinity is power, but because for one moment, everything clicked. It was a different kind of body dysmorphia. It was gender dysmorphia, too.
I came out at a trans/nonbinary show as nonbinary after facing a bit of gatekeeping in the community and received nothing but support in return. People came up to me in between acts giving me book recommendations to continue my understanding of what it means to be in between the past and the future, navigating ghosts in a vacant home. In the end, nothing matters. We put on a face everyday and it changes with the weather, skirts, shirts, jeans. The theater taught me to be anything and if that anything is trans, so be it.
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