‘Queer joy is contagious’ Trans storyteller Yoz Mensch brings her award-winning show to Edinburgh Fringe

After a successful Adelaide Fringe run, Australian Yoz Mensch is bringing My Grandpa Doesn’t Follow Me On Instagram to Edinburgh Fringe this summer. We caught up with Yoz find out more about the show, family and her trans identity.

The show is inspired by a real road trip with your grandfather from Cornwall to the Scottish Highlands — what made you decide that journey should be turned into a stage show?

It grew from yapping in the pub, at Cafe Du in the afternoons after clown school and in the artist bar at Edinburgh Fringe 2024. Each time I told stories about the trip, it got more theatrical. I was doing Pa’s voice- this slightly exaggerated, silly physicality- and I was starting to embody him. My new mates at the pub thought it was funny, so I decided ‘this was something’ and started working on it as a show.

When I got home to Australia, my friends were asking me if I was ‘out’ to Pa. For context - I was out as non-binary to some people in my life, and ‘out’ as a trans woman early in my transition just to my inner circle - but Pa, as far as I knew, didn’t know what non-binary meant, and at first hadn’t reacted positively when I changed my name, but was now fairly good at pronouncing Yoz.

The questions about what Pa knew about my identity were moments when I started considering this part of the story, this hidden self of it all. So there were actually two separate points when the show's narrative paths came together to turn the full story of this journey into a stage show.

You chose not to share your transition with your grandfather during the trip. How does it feel to revisit that experience and perform it for audiences?

It feels paradoxically good, it’s liberating, and… I still haven’t shared this with him. He was supposed to come and see the show in Melbourne in April this year. But in a strange twist of irony, he couldn’t get there because he no longer has the privilege of a driver's license. The audience reception of my story has been incredible, and I did not predict that at all, because the story is so deeply personal and specific. I’ve had so many people cry, laugh and hold my hands when they have chatted with me after the show. It has awakened feelings and memories that they didn’t expect. It has become clear that the story doesn’t just belong to me anymore, which is a delightful surprise and a great honour.

You multi-roll as all the eccentric characters you met along the way, including your grandfather. Which character was the most fun, or the most challenging, to bring to life?

There’s one character who is both deeply fun and brilliantly challenging, a Scottish lass called Bonnie. She's this giddy weirdo receptionist/waitress who listens to too many true crime podcasts. When she appears in the show, I am playing three different characters: her, my Grandpa and me. She's the absolute antithesis of my Grandpa; she’s fast-talking, friendly and nosy, whereas he’s slower, sceptical and grumpy. Learning to do this has felt like a milestone, because it takes a load of stamina and precision to quickly switch back and forth between the three of them talking to each other. Plus, I love doing a Scottish accent - the way it resonates in my skull just feels correct to my being.

The show debuted at Adelaide Fringe and won the Sydney Fringe Tour Ready Award before heading to Melbourne Comedy Festival. Has the show evolved at all since then, and what are you hoping Edinburgh audiences will bring to it?

It has had a natural evolution which is hard to pin down; the joke beats are tighter, and the characters have grown their internal worlds. What I’ve learnt from performing this show is that, regardless of whether I’m performing to sold-out crowds at Adelaide Fringe or to one person at Melbourne Comedy Festival - who just happened to be Nurse Georgie Carol - is that connection to the audience has been strong and joyful. I would be stoked with more of the same. One of the main goals me and my incredible director, Mary Angley, discussed during development stage zero was this idea of preciseness - and that as much as I love being a goose that rhymes, I wanted to try to ensure that every audience sees the same show, feels the same things, laughs at the same beats - a departure from my previous work that held a more clown inspired philosophy. This is to say the evolution of this show, much like myself over the past few years, has been one of becoming more itself - a deeper, more textured, more self-aware and self-confident version of that brave first iteration stepping out, and being perceived for the first time.

The soundtrack is described as half original score and half Chappell Roan. How did you land on that combination, and what does the music add to the storytelling?

The sound design was orchestrated by Adelaide-based artist Dan Thorpe. I feel like we complement each other, as both our work leans towards being genre-agnostic. Our collaboration process looked like this: I’d write dense prose for a scene idea, like a novella, then hand this to Dan, who would compose based on that - I would listen to his creation and improvise the dialogue of a given scene based on the music. Dan’s music makes the story feel so cinematic; it lifts my work into places I am ecstatic to reach. Chappell Roan’s music is an appreciation of the truth. She’s the only artist I remember listening to on the radio during the trip. Which, in a sense, makes the show a period piece about the UK summer of 2024. Her music felt like it was following me as a beacon of desire to exist authentically. Queer resilience can be born in private moments of secretly listening to your music at 2% volume on the car radio. It works so well in the show as an ‘I want’ song and also as a triumph of queer joy and a confident jubilee of self-acceptance.

With much of the show set in Scotland, you've mentioned that you hope it resonates with local audiences. Is there anything specific you're looking forward to about performing it on home turf for its UK premiere? I am just so happy to be here; touring a show internationally from Australia isn’t easy. For me personally, it feels like the closing of a cathartic loop, but for our audiences, I think embracing nuanced trans stories is very timely. When politicians and multi-national media outlets are peddling moral panic, scapegoating and division, I want to help flip the script to move away from a deficit-based lens. Queer joy is contagious; it can be a song that gets stuck in your head, and I’m inviting you to sing along.

My Grandpa Doesn’t Follow Me On Instagram is at the Edinburgh Fringe at Underbelly, Jelly Belly, 5 – 30 Aug 2026, 20:25 (21:25)  Ticket information here: My Grandpa Doesn't Follow Me On Instagram | Edinburgh Festival Fringe