ABSTRACT
Kate Bornstein (b.1948) became a playwright out of necessity; the transgender performer was frustrated that there were no roles for her in the late 1980s. Bornstein wrote her first play, Hidden: A Gender both to create an opportunity for herself and other trans actors, as well as to introduce audiences to how some people identify with neither male nor female. A self-proclaimed “gender outlaw,” Bornstein openly rejected the gender binary, marking them an early non-binary activist, decades before there was mainstream terminology for such a gender identity. Both of the following essays, “Transexual Playwright Tells All” and “Theatre, and the Future of the Body,” advocate for trans representation in theatre and media.
