“Anytime I mention the festival to someone in America, they say “you’re going to love it, it’s beautiful” so there’s a lot of hype and I expect zero disappointment.”
WHO: Titi Lee
WHAT: “Lifelong goody-two-shoes Titi Lee is breaking all the rules, and you are invited. With heartfelt humor and incisive wit, they confront their experience growing up as a first-gen Taiwanese American in the heart of Silicon Valley during the tech boom including coming out to their immigrant parents as bisexual, and then non-binary, getting pandemic boobs, and renouncing their good girl ways. Good Girl Gone Baddie is an endearing take on trading in a desperate need to be good for the freedom of being yourself.”
WHERE: Just the Tonic at Cabaret Voltaire – Just the Liberty Room (Venue 338)
WHEN: 12:30 (60 min)
MORE: Click Here!
Is this your first time to Edinburgh?
This is my first time coming to Edinburgh Fringe Festival AND Edinburgh in general.
I first found out about the festival in 2014 through Alex Edelman, who I had gone to school with and knew as a very hard-working and talented comedian. He won the Best Newcomer Award for Comedy for his show Millennial at the festival that year, and at the time I remember from stateside seeing his updates about the festival and being mesmerized by the energy and excitement of it all. And I remember there being a lot of fanfare around all of it, and I just thought ‘I have to go there’. I had only been doing standup for a year at that time, so it went on my list to revisit in ten years, and here we are.
Anytime I mention the festival to someone in America, they say “you’re going to love it, it’s beautiful” so there’s a lot of hype and I expect zero disappointment. That’s not to say there isn’t a lot of anxiety and sleepless nights where I wake up thinking ‘what have I gotten myself into’ and ‘why did I think doing all this on my own while in credit card debt was a good idea’ but I have a good sense of what’s to come in that I expect both nothing and also everything.
What are the big things you’ve learned since 2023 and have you absorbed any of the lessons yet?
The biggest thing I’ve learned in preparing for the show is that you’re always going to feel like you’re not doing enough, but that just means you’re running as fast as you can, and that’s a good sign. I’ve been preparing for the trip all year, but I still feel like I don’t know anything, and every day I get a new panic attack, and apparently that’s just part of the process. I had a good chat with another comedian who’s going this year (shoutout Catherine McCafferty) who told me “just remember you are a performer first and foremost” and that set me right.
In preparing for the show, I have had to sharpen my toolbelt in other arenas that I’m not typically used to doing. Since I’m coming all myself with no team members, I’m in charge of social media, promotion, budgeting, booking, tech, etc… and well, I have to say, I have so much respect for the publicity and marketing side of things. In May I received a grant from California Cultural Institute to take a digital marketing class at UCLA, and I used that to put together a social media campaign to promote the show. Sometimes I feel silly pushing myself so hard, but then I remember that even the most successful and well-known artists have to do the same. I mean, Ariana Grande’s been dong podcasts to promote Wicked… like, I already know who you are and I AM going to watch Wicked… but it’s all part of the process.
Tell us about your show.
My show is called Titi Lee: Good Girl Gone Baddie, and it’s a solo comedy show of mostly standup, some storytelling, a smidge of drag and Kpop dance. I am a standup comedian first and foremost, but I grew up doing musical theater and studio dance, so I’m taking elements of that and infusing it into the standup of it all. It’s a culmination of ten years of material and to be honest, of me figuring out how to be who I am, in all my forms.
The tagline for the show is “be yourself, all of them” and the reality is I feel like I’ve danced around my true self for years (no pun intended), and this is a moment I’m finally comfortable existing in all my extremes, unapologetically and authentically, while also being entertaining to the audience. I want the audience to feel the same joy as I do that I’ve gone through this journey, and I think it will come across by the end of the hour that it’s okay to start as one thing and end up another, but that doesn’t mean those early versions of “you” aren’t always part of who you really are.
Edinburgh will be the official premiere of the show, I’ve previewed it in Los Angeles at a couple theaters, and just came off doing it at Berlin Fringe (which is in its second year and I highly recommend for Fringe performers to apply to for next year! Lisa is the best!) and that was a really wonderful experience, so I’m pretty amped. In terms of where I’m taking this after… that will be for you all to decide! I would absolutely love to take it all over the world, so you tell me where you want this Baddie to go.
What should your audience see at the festivals after they’ve seen your show?
There are so many amazing comedians I know at the festival, but I’m going to shoutout out my gays… Ashley Gavin, Catherine McCafferty, Anna Akana, Bianca Cristovao is a killer that you may already know but if you don’t, you will.
Plus – Jay Light has a real fun game show called Wrong! That he’s bringing over from The Comedy Store, and Mark Vigeant has ‘Mark Pleases You’ which is phenomenal and he is one of the hardest working goofballs with an inimitable raw energy you’ll just fall in love with.
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