Gender Ordeal: Gender on Wheels is a powerhouse of trans comedy talent. It's a road-version of Tuck Woodstock's Gender Reveal podcast. It's a variety show that fits "six or seven" segments into a tight 90-minute evening with the show's host, cartoonist Mattie Lubchansky, and author Calvin Kasulke.
The live show format isn't really like Woodstock's thoughtful interview podcast, though it is still aiming to "get a little bit closer to understanding what the hell gender is."
"All the segments are pretty indescribable," Woodstock says, "other than the part where I do 10 minutes of stand-up… which is like… yeah, that's what that is."
In the far away yesteryear of 2017, Woodstock—a journalist and then-Portlander—started a podcast about gender. He borrowed its name from a bizarre cultural practice where people communicate the gender of their yet-to-be-born children by doing things like exploding objects with pink or blue fireworks (occasionally starting a wildfire in the process).
Woodstock turned the concept on its head, unwinding personal stories through interviews with trans professionals, activists, and politicians about not just gender but certainly gender. In the years that followed, Gender Reveal gave rise to Gender Conceal: a paid tier, extra content show for subscribers, which supports the show and also introduces more comedic, off-the-cuff material.
Gender Ordeal follows this naming convention and is essentially a variety show that Woodstock has taken on tour to Brooklyn (he now lives in a New York borough), Boston, Philly, and Washington DC before bringing it, polished and primed, to discerning West Coast audiences.
Initially, Gender Reveal's tour shows mirrored the podcast's interview format—a format that tends to feel a little dry to a live audience. Woodstock and his team considered: "What if we added more guests?" Woodstock says. "What if some of the guests—instead of being interviewed—performed onstage or maybe played a game? What if they offered audience advice? All of a sudden, the live shows were nine segments long and were essentially comedy nights. To be clear, nobody asked for this," he says, deadpan.
It worked. In part, because Woodstock has great comedic timing, but the shows became difficult to program, as he tried to find guests in multiple cities that could handle comedy improv, roll with the multi-part material, and who had an interesting creative practice to bring to the mix.
"You're standing in the center of town banging on a platinum pan, like 'I need four talented trans people!'" Lubchansky jokes.
"Of various identities and talents," Woodstock adds. "Calvin was listening to me talk about this, and was just like, I would come with you, and Mattie would come with you, too, I assume." He was right.
Kasulke, Woodstock, and Lubchansky are each notable for their separate creative projects and hilarious in their own right. Lubchansky was an associate editor at now-defunct comics news site The Nib and has published several graphic novels, notably Antifa Super-Soldier Cookbook (2021) and Boys Weekend (2023). Kasulke is the author of Several People Are Typing (2021), a novel that Woodstock says "is set on Slack and doesn't have any right to be as good as it is."
Kasulke remembers Woodstock's ire at liking a book that used Slack as a framing was one the first ways they met. Lubchansky remembers meeting Kasulke when "Calvin marched up to me at a comics convention and said, 'We're going to be at a party together next week.' And he walked away."
"Announcing myself like a Twin Peaks character." Kasulke agrees.
Woodstock is also bringing 2 Trans 2 Furious (2024), a book on the tour (co-edited by Woodstock and Niko Stratis), which collects writing and art from 40 trans thinkers on the Fast & Furious movie franchise.
Is Gender Ordeal a book tour? "It's a thinly disguised book tour," Woodstock says, noting that they'll all be signing books after the show.
Within Gender Ordeal's several segments, Lubchansky will project her comics and read them for the audience, drawing from some she's done before and "new ones that are unreleased," made just for the show. Kasulke has revamped something he used to read for the radio, called Cassingles where he reads trans personal ads that he found in archived publications like the Village Voice. Woodstock performs his 10-minute stand-up routine and incites the other two to battle one another via changing onstage games. "For example, I once combed Tumblr for obscure Pride flags, and then challenged them to recognize what each represented. Some were really obscure, like lesbians who like Buck Barnes or anxious pansexuals," he says.
"What is important to me about the show is that it is expressly for trans people," Woodstock says. "It's 100, 200, 300, mostly trans people in a room laughing. And I think if you're not gathering right now then you're either alone with everything, or you're online—the worst place that you could possibly be. If you're trans and online, you're like, they're going to kill me tomorrow. But if you're trans, in real life, with your friends, you're like: We're vibing. It's going to be okay. We'll get through it together. It just feels a lot more doable."
Gender Reveal Podcast Presents: Gender Ordeal w/Tuck Woodstock, Calvin Kasulke & Mattie Lubchansky is Fri Feb 12 at Here-After at 7 pm. The show is sold out but you can sign up for a waitlist here. Content warning for sexual references and mature themes.
This story originally ran in Portland Mercury, our sister publication.
