When Ren Quilian Dawe first stepped onto a stage with only a microphone and his wit, he could have never imagined where stand-up comedy would take him. Now, a little over three years later, he’s preparing for his first national tour, Here To Pee, a stand-up comedy showcase and protest tour featuring all transgender comedians. Here To Pee is going where no trans comedian has ever gone — all 50 US states. The year-long tour will take Dawe from some of the harshest anti-trans states in the Bible belt to the glittering streets of New York to share his simple message: everybody pees.
Though he only started performing as a stand-up comedian three years ago, Dawe got his start in performance nearly a decade earlier. He began performing in his home state of West Virginia as a part of Shepherd University’s theater troupe – the only catch? Dawe wasn’t enrolled as a student. After a few years, he left the University’s theater troupe to start his own.
“We had a lot of creative freedom, and I was grateful for the Appalachian community coming together – a lot of Appalachian homies love the arts,” he said. “It was beneficial to draw upon the college for all the incredible talents coming out of this pretty rural area.”
Eventually, Dawe found his way to the stage as a comedian. For him, stand-up was a way to connect back to his theater roots. Despite his natural talent and knack for humor, Dawe struggled to book shows, even when he deliberately wrote “clean” comedy. The reason? He’s transgender.
“I like to make clean content, but a lot of Trans stuff, as it is with a lot of LGBTQ creators and writers, they get painted as ‘blue,’ as a very dirty or raunchy comedy,” he said. “Anything related to your sexual orientation must be sexual in nature, or anything related to transness must be very taboo, right?”
Dawe decided to play with people’s expectations. When writing material about his gender and sexuality, he made sure to keep the jokes clean and family-friendly. His “dirty” material tended to be about mundane asexual aspects of life. He started “Making something normal into something raunchy and then making the Trans content as clean as I can.”
Despite his clean transgender material, Dawe still found that many venues refused to book him unless he agreed not to talk about his identity. “That’s one of the things I’m quite firm on,” he said. “I don’t wanna be closeted in my act, even if it would land another booking. I don’t think that being trans is inherently dirty.”
In 2024, after traveling the country to perform in various comedy festivals, Dawe got the idea to start his show. “Everywhere I go, I find other trans people, and on top of that, I find people that have never met trans people or don’t know that they’ve met trans people before,” he said. “I’ve had many people have extreme positive reactions seeing something in a different light or being exposed to a concept they would have never been exposed to. That was eye-opening for me.”
As he toyed with the idea of producing a multi-state transgender comedy showcase, Dawe experienced something else surprising. “When I came home to Colorado after this last tour that I did in 2024, I was almost assaulted in a public bathroom,” he recalled. Even in a liberal state, he encountered a dangerous situation while just trying to use the bathroom. Had a bystander not walked in, he fears things may have turned violent.
“It made me realize, I see so much change in people when they are exposed to trans people and the frames of thought that come with that exposure to trans stories and trans opinions,” he said. “I also see just how physically dangerous it can be when people are neglected from hearing those stories, experiences, and points of view. That can escalate to physical violence. And man, I’m just here to pee.”
Following the bathroom incident, Dawe started to plan his tour. Initially, he aimed to hit all the states that had proposed anti-transgender legislation, particularly ones about bathroom laws. However, once he started looking into the issue, he realized it was much larger than he’d thought. “When [I] looked at how many states actually proposed anti-trans legislation, it was most of them,” he said. “It seems silly to go to 42 out of 50 states.”
With the decision to go where no trans performer had gone before – all 50 states – Dawe started planning. He first reached out to comedians in the Pacific Northwest and received immediate enthusiasm for the tour. From there, he began planning the second part of the tour, connecting with nonprofits in each state to give the proceeds back to the local trans communities.
“[We are working with] nonprofits that are either providing direct service to the trans community or doing the legislative work to battle anti-trans ballot measures and legislative initiatives on the local and state level,” Dawe said. “We’re hoping to cover most of our operations costs with individual donations and any grant funding that might come through, so that way we can donate as much of the ticket proceeds as possible to each nonprofit every step of the way, and the more people that come out for that local show, the more we’re able to donate to that local nonprofit.”
With all the pieces coming together, Dawe realized he needed to consider one more financial aspect. “We had to figure out … bail money for our performers, which is the first time as a producer I’ve ever had to do that,” he said. “We have some reservations for some of the more heavily legislated areas that have bathroom legislation because whenever there is a bathroom legislation that has been passed, we are going out of our way to break those rules.”
Here to Pee partnered with Rocking Out Equality, a fiscal organization they can contact if necessary to pay the bail of any performers who may be arrested for attempting to use the bathroom. “The states with the most intense legislation are Wyoming, Utah, Texas, and Florida,” Dawe said. “There is a very aggressive spirit of the law, which is to prevent trans people from feeling safe and using public spaces.”
Dawe has also partnered with transgender filmmaker Jeff Stonic, who will document the tour for an upcoming film. Featured on Hulu and Netflix is a Joke, Stonic is an experimental documentarian dedicated to showcasing the grit of everyday Americans facing oppression with a smile and a sense of humor. “They’re doing incredible work to uplift marginalized communities, especially in the performance space. We’re so excited to have them on board,” Dawe said. “If you miss the tour, hopefully, you can catch the documentary.”
The tour’s first leg starts on March 1 in Colorado and heads throughout the West Coast. The East Coast leg begins in Tulsa on April 11 and hits New York on May 3. While Dawe is excited to experience all that America offers, he’s most excited to return to West Virginia.
“Nobody knows how to party like a West Virginian; nobody knows how to laugh or have as good of a time as a West Virginian,” he said with a smile. “I believe that just to my heart and through my heart in the soul, a lot of my humor stems from the humor that I learned growing up in that place.”
As Dawe prepares to embark on his life journey, he holds the lessons he learned on the stage back in West Virginia close to his chest. “We’re about to go into something kind of heavy,” he admitted. “I do believe that laughter saves lives. I believe it to my absolute core, and we’re hoping people can come out and laugh.”
Tickets for the tour are available now at https://www.renqcomedy.com/heretopee.
