Esther Fallick wants her comedy to be an escape from the horrors. But that escape has a purpose: to make it easier to face these times for what they are. By poking fun at something that can feel so heavy, like the president pitting his administration against transgender people, Fallick wants to find ways to bring people together and laugh off the darkness creeping in on everyday life.
“We could be having a little more fun as a community, as a country. I just feel like so much of what we’re talking about as trans people right now is so dire. There’s reason for that, but I just wanted a space to be intentionally silly,” she said. Intentions aside, she still spent the first episode of her podcast — aptly titled, “Having Fun” — joking about fleeing anti-trans violence in America with fellow comedian Ella Yurman. The gallows humor is inescapable.
Her weekly variety show in Brooklyn, titled “While We’re Here,” is also a dark joke: We’re only here, alive and on this planet, for so long. And life is only getting harder. So what should we do in the meantime? Fallick suggests laughter, to start, followed by music, reading and teach-ins on topics ranging from transmisogyny — how trans women are hurt by both misogyny and transphobia — to demilitarizing New York City’s police force, especially in Brooklyn.