Adrienne Truscott has a difficult time explaining to people what she does. She's a dancer, a circus performer, a writer, and a teacher. She's one half of the "neo-vaudevillian" burlesque act the Wau Wau Sisters. She's no stranger to performing. But through all of these pursuits, Truscott has discovered that the best way to make people sit up and pay attention is by making them laugh.

And that's precisely why she used comedy as an unexpected route into tackling one of the least funny topics that plagues us both nationally and around the world: rape. Truscott's one woman show, Asking For It, which hits Joe's Pub on April 11th and 18th, finds the performer nude from the waist down (well, she wears high heels), telling as many rape jokes as she can in the show's hour long run time. If you're scratching your head now, or there's steam coming out of your ears, that's all part of the plan. Through a format that blends comedy, music, video, and unfortunately current events, Truscott wants to make you laugh while also making you consider how desperately our conversation about rape needs to change.

The brutally funny, unapologetically brash performer cum comedienne spoke with me about bachelor parties, performing pants-less, what it means to be edgy, and what it really means to be "Asking For It."

Could you talk a little bit about the inception of the show and how you decided that the rape joke could be used as a format or inspiration for theater?

Oddly, or I might even say thank god, I had been working on this show long before...not long before anybody made a rape joke, but before it became this ubiquitous online argument/conversation. And that was just me wondering if matching up what seemed to be diametrically opposed things, which would be talking about rape and using comedy, [was possible]...if you could write jokes about it from a satirical point of view, use comedy to talk about something really heavy -- which is something that's been done through the ages. And then as I was working on it, what sort of sped up my process and finishing it and getting it a gig, was the conversation online rose to a sort of wildly audible international chatter in the wake of the Daniel Tosh comeback joke controversy.

It's certainly historically true that people say sometimes it's only the comedian or the fool in the King's court that can speak the unspeakable. It's a Shakespearean paraphrase, but if you can make people laugh, you can say anything. That said, the current ubiquitousness of the "edgy rape joke" is pretty rampant. By my definition, that undermines the very notion that it's edgy at this point -- which undermines my own show on some level. But I still feel like the conversation around a dude making a rape joke still falls into the conversation that comedy has to be edgy and comedy has to push the boundaries. Right? But if like every fucking comic... you can throw a stone in the air and hit a comic that's made a rape joke. And they're very often comics that very comfortably fall into the straight white male or at least straight male category, making a rape joke that has a similar setup and a similar delivery and a similar victim of the punchline to an audience of largely the same people... that's not edgy to me.

Do you first and foremost identify yourself as a comedian? What about the labels of performance artist or actress?

(Laughs) I definitely wouldn't call myself an actress.

I guess I don't really know what to call myself, and sometimes having to call myself something feels weird. I've performed in a lot of different ways. I'm a dancer, I'm a choreographer and a cabaret artist and a circus performer, and all of those endeavors, whatever the genre, have always been a comic endeavor on some level, so I think I'm very newly a standup comedian. And I think I go on stage now, on occasion, and more of the hats I wear are those of a standup comic. But I didn't come up through the business by doing my five to seven minutes at an open mic every week. And also, I bring other things to it, like video or nudity or a very intentional sense of costuming, and that kind of thing which I think comes from other backgrounds.

You mention that you perform nude. Could you talk a little bit about how that became an essential part of the show?

As a dancer and also as half of the Wau Wau Sisters, I have definitely explored performing nude lots of times, and the different effects it can still have on an audience. So at some point, I just thought, well, that's a way of comically and also actually taking the notion of a woman's attire or behavior seeming to equate her sexual availability to the extreme. And I very specifically chose not to be naked. I wear a jacket and I wear heels. Because it's not about nudity the way we think about it in terms of art or performance art. It was really just about like, this is the scene of trespass that we're actually discussing. I also think it's a ludicrous costume that's funny and not, you know... I certainly get people in my audience who have come, or it seems like they've come, so they can stare at pussy. And I don't know if they're anticipating an erotic experience (laughs), but I don't think that's what they get. I think it's quite funny and equally confronting as it is disarming, because I think I'm very comfortable with it, and because it's not meant to be a hostile confrontation.

Along those lines, I know in other interviews you've mentioned that sometimes bachelor parties will show up. Do you ever worry that people misconstrue your message, or take something away that you feel misses the mark?

No, I think that they can certainly come to the show with an agenda that may not match the experience that they get -- and that's absolutely fine, and I make a great effort to send out images and signals that would invite people for all sorts of reasons. I really am thankful that that works, because I don't want to do a show for some sort of homogenized audience where all of their expectations are the same. I don't think any comic would want to.

I don't think people leave my show, with a like "Aha, for $20 we saw a vagina! We really pulled one over on her." But it certainly confounds and delights me that a bachelor party would spend their last night of what we understand culturally as sexual abandon and last chance to get in all of your naughty behavior, that they come to a show about rape with one naked comedian? That's hilarious to me. And certainly, anyone who's working front of house kind of lets me know like, "Hey, just FYI, there's ten drunk guys out on a stag night." I don't want to walk out on stage unprepared for that. But in making the show and putting it out there, and putting it out there with the elements I chose to accompany it, like nudity and whatnot, I certainly have known from the get go to expect anything.

Do you have a sense of an ideal audience or an ideal takeaway, or are you rooted in this idea that everyone will come in with their own experience and take their own lesson from it?

It's funny, that's the hardest question I ever get asked. Because in my mind and in my heart, I'm like, I don't think I can change anybody's mind! But then I think, well, Adrienne, you made a very specific show, so... (Laughs)

At the time I was making it, I just felt like I heard a lot of conversation about rape, or lazy cultural assumptions about why it happens, like unbelievably ignorant legislation that happens along those lines. And I would even see campaigns by rape crisis centers that still put the onus on women, and that sort of thing just frustrated me a great deal. More than anything, I just wanted to say a bunch of stuff that I didn't feel like I heard out in the world, and I wanted to say it comically. Because for me, things get heard in a different way sometimes if you say it like that. So yeah, I definitely hope that some of the things I say might make someone consider something they've thought or read in a new way. Or even just to consider what they hear, as opposed to just taking it in without looking at it, like we so often do. Just the whole like, "You shouldn't have walked home alone": there's so many things to pick apart about that -- starting with the fact that most women are raped in the "comfort" of their own home.

Recently there was some debate around Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer making rape jokes on the television show Broad City. Criticism from women in particular. Is this show about a reclamation of the dialogue? Is this show specifically for women?

I don't think that the show is just for women. I've experienced hearing laughter that I know is laughter coming from women, because I think they're laughing at the same thing, and that's sort of a joy to hear someone take the piss out of something incredibly stupid that we all see or have experienced in the world. So, in that way I feel like it is for women. I've also heard that laughter from men. I've also heard uncomfortable laughter from men...and women.

I think that people have so many incredibly strong reactions to the word rape itself, that the reactions in the audience really run the gamut. But I do think, I've certainly noticed a reclamation of the conversation around rape from women from all different areas, and comedy is one of the most noticeable ones.... I feel like the whole conversation is a moment of reclamation, which is just like, if you think you're allowed to talk; you can still talk about these things, Mister (if we're gonna assume it's a guy or some idiot conservative woman). You can still say what's on your mind. But the times have changed, and when you do say it, you do not sound like you're speaking from a place of unquestioned authority. You sound like a fucking idiot. And people tend to make fun of fucking idiots. If you're gonna be mouthy and arrogant and then be incredibly and wildly ignorant and behind the times and uninformed, it's like, there are going to be a bunch of people who make fun of you. And it feels like that's happening.

Lately you took the show to Australia. What was your experience performing the show internationally?

Um, not so much, but that said I've only performed it in sort of like Western, English-speaking cultures that aren't far from what I'm most comfortable in, what I'm situated in. Sometimes I have jokes in my show that open to women in India or women in Saudi Arabia, and it sometimes feels like a PC "woaaaaah..." feeling in the laughter. Like, "She's not Indian, is she allowed to talk about that?" But I'm not talking about Indian culture, I'm talking about the consistency of the way women are treated throughout many cultures, as well as saying, well, it turns out even if you wear a hijab, or even if you don't drive, and don't go to school, and only show your eyes, and are not allowed to drink, turns out that's asking for it too. So I guess that doesn't really have anything to do with it.

I wish my show would become entirely irrelevant, but it doesn't seem like it will. I keep thinking that the conversation around what we can joke about will shift, but it still seems like a very hot topic.

You've mentioned the idea that your show is constantly evolving. I mean, people are always saying ignorant things, but is that the hope? The hope that your show just won't be needed? Or is this an indefinitely ongoing project for you?

When I was first working on it, I felt like the show meant a lot to me, but the moment I put it out it it was a very specific moment when it was incredibly topical. I imagined that the particular version of its topicality would end, so I'm very lucky that I'm still doing the show a year and a half later, and it's pretty much through the end of 2015 so far. I've tried to be really smart about updating the show and not keep prattling on about what happened two years ago at a comedy club in LA. So there's not that much material about Daniel Tosh. There's still material about what makes a rape joke funny. Fortunately, Bill Cosby swooped in in the nick of time and the conversation sort of shifted. What started out as a comment on comedians making jokes about rape turned into a conversation about comedians raping -- comedians whose materials never touched on anything so blue and so dark, but, as it turns out, their actual behavior did. I do find that the show updates in that way, in actual news topicality.

I'm often asked by journalists, sometimes as the first question out of the gate, "Have you ever been raped? Is that why you're doing the show?" You know, that notion of, because I'm a woman making jokes about rape I must have some personal experience. And I understand, it's an entire show, and it's intentional. So that's a legitimate question on the one hand. But it also pretends that the only reason I can make a joke is because I have a personal relationship to it. And by the same logic, then, any guy making a joke about raping someone would then have a personal relationship to it, and I reckon they aren't asking guys if they raped anyone just 'cause they made a rape joke. Things about that, about authorship in comedy and things like that, continue to interest me, and this seems to be a way to investigate that.

I will do the show as long as it feels relevant and powerful to do. If an audience or city asks me to do it there, then I'm delighted to do it and I do update it. I'm not naive about thinking that the problem will go away, but I'm hopeful that the way we think about it, and eventually some aspect of how it actually occurs in the world will change.

I'm like, I can't believe rape isn't over... my show is a whole hour!