Ian Harvie
Encyclopedia
Ian Harvie is an American stand-up comedian who often references being a trans man
in his performances.
at a very early age, but didn't have a language for his gender identity
at the time. Ian came out
as queer
at nineteen and later as Transgender at age thirty-two. Harvie grew up on Beaver Pond in rural mountain town, Bridgton, Maine until the age of twelve and has two older brothers Rob and Jeff. He cites early comedy influences The Carol Burnett Show
, Flip Wilson
, Rich Little
, Hee Haw
, Laugh-In, Dean Martin Celebrity Roast, and Saturday Night Live
.
as her Opening Act. Cho cast Harvie as a permanent member of her off-Broadway burlesque
comedy revue: Margaret Cho's: The Sensuous Woman
.
In April 2007, Harvie began producing and hosting his own self-titled comedy/talk show: The Ian Harvie Show at Los Angeles music and comedy club, Largo
. The show is a similar format to other late-night talk shows but with guests who are all LGBT
or connected to the LGBT community. Previous guests of the show include Margaret Cho
, Leslie Jordan
, Jane Lynch
, Alan Cumming
, Jorja Fox
, Suzanne Westenhoefer
, Kimberly Pierce, Rex Lee
, Selene Luna
, Jenny Shimizu
, Buck Angel
, Garrison Starr
, Sabrina Matthews, and Erin Foley.
From October 2006 through October 2009, Harvie toured comedy clubs and theaters around the world with Margaret Cho
. In 2007 Harvie appeared on Logo
as part of Wisecrack Outlaugh Festival on Wisecrack. Harvie performed on Logo
again in 2009 on One Night Standup Episode 6 and on ABC
's late night television series, Comics Unleashed
with Byron Allen
in the 2009 season.
In November of 2009 Harvie began his solo headlining career and took his one-man show Parts Sold Separately, which features humor about sex and gender, played the Melbourne International Comedy Arts Festival in Melbourne Australia in April 2010. In January 2011 Harvie performed his new solo show Balls OUT with Ian Harvie at SF SketchFest
in San Francisco, CA.
In September 2010 Harvie and fellow sober Comedians Felon O'Reilly and Amy Dresner began a three-person comedy group and traveling around the US with their collective recovery-based standup comedy show titled Laughs Without Liquor, the We Are Not Saints tour. The road show and tour is currently being filmed by Filmmaker and Director Bobby R. Poirier and is set to be released Summer 2011.
Trans man
A trans man, transman, trans guy, or FTM is a transgender or transsexual man: a person who was assigned female at birth, but who identifies as male....
in his performances.
Early life
Harvie knew he was transgenderTransgender
Transgender is a general term applied to a variety of individuals, behaviors, and groups involving tendencies to vary from culturally conventional gender roles....
at a very early age, but didn't have a language for his gender identity
Gender identity
A gender identity is the way in which an individual self-identifies with a gender category, for example, as being either a man or a woman, or in some cases being neither, which can be distinct from biological sex. Basic gender identity is usually formed by age three and is extremely difficult to...
at the time. Ian came out
Coming out
Coming out is a figure of speech for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people's disclosure of their sexual orientation and/or gender identity....
as queer
Queer
Queer is an umbrella term for sexual minorities that are not heterosexual, heteronormative, or gender-binary. In the context of Western identity politics the term also acts as a label setting queer-identifying people apart from discourse, ideologies, and lifestyles that typify mainstream LGBT ...
at nineteen and later as Transgender at age thirty-two. Harvie grew up on Beaver Pond in rural mountain town, Bridgton, Maine until the age of twelve and has two older brothers Rob and Jeff. He cites early comedy influences The Carol Burnett Show
The Carol Burnett Show
The Carol Burnett Show is a variety / sketch comedy television show starring Carol Burnett, Harvey Korman, Vicki Lawrence, Lyle Waggoner, and Tim Conway. It originally ran on CBS from September 11, 1967, to March 29, 1978, for 278 episodes and originated from CBS Television City's Studio 33...
, Flip Wilson
Flip Wilson
Clerow Wilson, Jr. , known professionally as Flip Wilson, was an American comedian and actor. In the early 1970s, Wilson hosted his own weekly variety series, The Flip Wilson Show...
, Rich Little
Rich Little
Richard Caruthers "Rich" Little is a Canadian-American impressionist and voice actor. He has long been known throughout the world as a top impersonator of famous people, resulting in his nickname, "The Man of a Thousand Voices"....
, Hee Haw
Hee Haw
Hee Haw is an American television variety show featuring country music and humor with fictional rural Kornfield Kounty as a backdrop. It aired on CBS-TV from 1969–1971 before a 20-year run in local syndication. The show was inspired by Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, the major difference being...
, Laugh-In, Dean Martin Celebrity Roast, and Saturday Night Live
Saturday Night Live
Saturday Night Live is a live American late-night television sketch comedy and variety show developed by Lorne Michaels and Dick Ebersol. The show premiered on NBC on October 11, 1975, under the original title of NBC's Saturday Night.The show's sketches often parody contemporary American culture...
.
Comedy career
Harvie began his stand-up comedy career in January 2002 at a small comedy club in Portland, Maine. Three months later he began performing at a sister club in Boston, Massachusetts. Harvie moved to Los Angeles, California in June 2006. By November 2006 he began touring with iconic comedienne Margaret ChoMargaret Cho
Margaret Cho is an American comedian, fashion designer, actress, author, and recording artist. Cho is best known for her stand-up routines, through which she critiques social and political problems, especially those pertaining to race and sexuality. She has also directed and appeared in music...
as her Opening Act. Cho cast Harvie as a permanent member of her off-Broadway burlesque
Burlesque
Burlesque is a literary, dramatic or musical work intended to cause laughter by caricaturing the manner or spirit of serious works, or by ludicrous treatment of their subjects...
comedy revue: Margaret Cho's: The Sensuous Woman
The Sensuous Woman
The Sensuous Woman is a book by Joan Garrity. Published first during 1969 with the pseudonym "J", it is a detailed instruction manual concerning sexuality for women....
.
In April 2007, Harvie began producing and hosting his own self-titled comedy/talk show: The Ian Harvie Show at Los Angeles music and comedy club, Largo
Largo
-Music:* Largo, a very slow tempo, or a musical piece or movement in such a tempo* Handel's Largo or "Ombra mai fù", an aria from the opera Serse* Hugo Largo, American band from the 1980s* Strong and stately...
. The show is a similar format to other late-night talk shows but with guests who are all LGBT
LGBT
LGBT is an initialism that collectively refers to "lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender" people. In use since the 1990s, the term "LGBT" is an adaptation of the initialism "LGB", which itself started replacing the phrase "gay community" beginning in the mid-to-late 1980s, which many within the...
or connected to the LGBT community. Previous guests of the show include Margaret Cho
Margaret Cho
Margaret Cho is an American comedian, fashion designer, actress, author, and recording artist. Cho is best known for her stand-up routines, through which she critiques social and political problems, especially those pertaining to race and sexuality. She has also directed and appeared in music...
, Leslie Jordan
Leslie Jordan
Leslie Allen Jordan is an American actor and playwright.- Early life and career :Hailing from Chattanooga, Tennessee, and at a height of 4 ft 11 in , Jordan has made numerous appearances in both film and television...
, Jane Lynch
Jane Lynch
Jane Marie Lynch is an American comedian, actress and singer. She gained fame in Christopher Guest's improv mockumentary pictures such as Best in Show and is currently best known for playing the role of Sue Sylvester in the television series Glee...
, Alan Cumming
Alan Cumming
Alan Cumming, OBE is a Scottish stage, television and film actor, singer, writer, director, producer and author. His roles have included the Emcee in Cabaret, Boris Grishenko in GoldenEye, Kurt Wagner/Nightcrawler in X2: X-Men United, Mr. Elton in Emma, and Fegan Floop in the Spy Kids trilogy...
, Jorja Fox
Jorja Fox
Jorja-An Fox , is an American actress, musician and songwriter. She first came to prominence as a guest star on the television drama ER, portraying the recurring role of Dr. Maggie Doyle from 1996 to 1999. This was followed by another critical success in the recurring role of Secret Service Agent...
, Suzanne Westenhoefer
Suzanne Westenhoefer
Suzanne Westenhoefer is an out lesbian stand-up comedian. She starred as a panelist on GSN's 2006 remake of I've Got a Secret, which featured a panel of gay celebrities who had to guess the various guests' 'secrets' through a series of timed questions...
, Kimberly Pierce, Rex Lee
Rex Lee
Rex Lee is an American actor. He is best known for his role on the HBO original series, Entourage, as Lloyd Lee.-Early life:Lee was born in Warren, Ohio...
, Selene Luna
Selene Luna
Selene Luna is an actress, comedienne, burlesque star, and model known for her roles on comedian Margaret Cho's reality TV series The Cho Show and in such films as My Bloody Valentine 3D...
, Jenny Shimizu
Jenny Shimizu
Jenny Lynn Shimizu is an American model and actress. She was born in San Jose, California.- Career :While working as a mechanic she was approached to model for the Calvin Klein CK1 fragrance ads and model Calvin Klein fashions...
, Buck Angel
Buck Angel
Buck Angel is a female-to-male transsexual and adult film maker and an LGBT icon of popular culture. He is also founder of Buck Angel Entertainment, as a vehicle to produce media projects...
, Garrison Starr
Garrison Starr
Garrison Starr is a singer-songwriter who originally hails from Hernando, Mississippi, a suburb of Memphis, Tennessee. As a solo artist, she has recorded seven full-length albums, as well as two EPs and one live album...
, Sabrina Matthews, and Erin Foley.
From October 2006 through October 2009, Harvie toured comedy clubs and theaters around the world with Margaret Cho
Margaret Cho
Margaret Cho is an American comedian, fashion designer, actress, author, and recording artist. Cho is best known for her stand-up routines, through which she critiques social and political problems, especially those pertaining to race and sexuality. She has also directed and appeared in music...
. In 2007 Harvie appeared on Logo
Logo (TV channel)
Logo is an American digital cable television channel owned by Viacom's MTV Networks division. Launched in June 2005, the channel's programs are geared towards the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender community...
as part of Wisecrack Outlaugh Festival on Wisecrack. Harvie performed on Logo
Logo (TV channel)
Logo is an American digital cable television channel owned by Viacom's MTV Networks division. Launched in June 2005, the channel's programs are geared towards the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender community...
again in 2009 on One Night Standup Episode 6 and on ABC
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
's late night television series, Comics Unleashed
Comics Unleashed
Comics Unleashed is a half-hour comedic talk show produced by the Entertainment Studios production company and hosted by Byron Allen, with John Cramer as announcer and ' providing music support. The show features a panel of four guest comedians performing their standup bits thinly disguised as a...
with Byron Allen
Byron Allen
Byron Allen is an American comedian. He is the head of Entertainment Studios, a broadcast syndication company responsible for producing and distributing several television shows pertaining to stand-up comedy and the entertainment industry. Allen also hosts some of the shows himself.-Early...
in the 2009 season.
In November of 2009 Harvie began his solo headlining career and took his one-man show Parts Sold Separately, which features humor about sex and gender, played the Melbourne International Comedy Arts Festival in Melbourne Australia in April 2010. In January 2011 Harvie performed his new solo show Balls OUT with Ian Harvie at SF SketchFest
SF Sketchfest
SF Sketchfest, or The San Francisco Sketch Comedy Festival, is a comedy festival founded in 2002 by Bay Area actor-comedians David Owen, Janet Varney and Cole Stratton...
in San Francisco, CA.
In September 2010 Harvie and fellow sober Comedians Felon O'Reilly and Amy Dresner began a three-person comedy group and traveling around the US with their collective recovery-based standup comedy show titled Laughs Without Liquor, the We Are Not Saints tour. The road show and tour is currently being filmed by Filmmaker and Director Bobby R. Poirier and is set to be released Summer 2011.
Filmography
- James Lipton Is Dead (2007) as God.
- We Are Not Saints (2011) in production as Self.