F*cking Trans Women, Zoë Comeau’s one-person show about navigating sex and love as a transgender woman, is dazzling.

Even for a buttoned-down, heterosexual female like myself, the show is funny, joyful and rooted in the universal need for love, touch and sex – lots of it.

Comeau, a Dalhousie theatre graduate and Théâtre DesAssimilés creator, has extensively revamped and re-designed her Halifax Fringe Festival show for a run at the Bus Stop Theatre, 2203 Gottingen St., through Saturday, 8 p.m. (tickets $10 to $20 at F*cking Trans Women Tickets, Multiple Dates | Eventbrite).

F*cking Trans Women, titled for the zine of the same name, is an eye-opener into the challenges and pleasures of sex for a transgender woman, as well as considerations of body change and growing into one’s self.

This is a brave new world of identity, gender, sexuality and freedom and the audience at Wednesday’s show appreciated the view, giving Comeau a standing ovation.

Comeau is honest, fearless, sassy and totally charming as she tells her stories and those of others using comic animation by Tori Ryan, a filmed version of herself in one section, and the force of her own compelling acting, precise articulation, good sense of timing and warmth.

From the very beginning, when she appears in a coat of a blue naked woman with a pink penis, designed by Diego Cavedon Dias, she is playful and comforting to her audience, pointing out that anyone who is uncomfortable may leave (“but you did buy a ticket”).

Matthew Downey’s projection and lighting design keep the focus on Comeau, who stands in front of a soft curtain acting as a screen for pictures of walking, curling and shrinking penises, among other things. The light is hot on Comeau who is just inches from her audience saying some of the most intimate things imaginable. She is also bathed at times in cooling diffused light as well as wiggling purple sperm (see above).

Comeau is the show’s performer, writer, producer and director; in this case, which is rare, self-direction works since she knows exactly what she wants to say and how she wants to say it. She ranges from gracious and self-deprecating to a fierce and rapid Acadian French with the text translated behind her.

Comeau has made an interesting choice in terms of where she ends the show. The journey getting to the end – which works – is a bit wobbly in the later stages of the 80-minute piece.

The creative team includes dramaturge Natasha MacLellan, director of this summer’s Theatre Baddeck hit Half-Cracked: The Legend of Sissy Mary and artistic director of Theatre New Brunswick, and a soothing sound design by Dario Lozano-Thornton and Malcolm Chiasson with stage management by Disco Labrie.

F*cking Trans Women is listed among the events for Halifax Pride celebrations at: https://gay.hfxns.org/LocalEvents. There is no new date for the parade, postponed last weekend for obvious reasons.

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