Assigned Female at Birth, a web series about some bodies

Early in the pandemic award-winning writer Lyralen Kaye began participating in on-line festivals presented on Zoom, YouTube and Facebook Live, as theater and film artists did all over the world. An award-winning writer and long-time producer, Kaye wasn’t satisfied with Zoom plays and readings; they became convinced that having actors film themselves remotely could work. Then, Clare Solly suggested Kaye write a play about body image. Kaye, who identifies as a non-binary gender fluid pansexual living with a PTSD disability, began reaching out to queer communities and communities of color for interview subjects, and so AFAB took on a life of its own.

“Body is race, gender, identity, age, ability and size,” Kaye says. “You can’t write about body image in today’s world and not enter the complications of intersectionality.”

The 23 characters depicted in AFAB, like the 32 people interviewed by Kaye, have been taught from birth that their bodies can never be good enough. Not able enough, not straight enough, not cis enough, not thin enough, not white enough, not gay enough, not femme enough, not butch enough, not young enough…the list goes on. All feel invisible—from the gender fluid Asian lesbian born with a fibular hemimelia disability to the trans rabbi on the spectrum who is also a cancer survivor—they struggle to be seen.
And whether the prejudice they fight is ableism or racism, homophobia or transphobia or misogyny, whether they seek healing from #metoo issues or disabilities they’ve had since birth, they reach for life with courage. Bold, frightened, vulnerable, ridiculously strong, they are, above all things, woke.