So, what does a creative do when a pandemic cancels their gigs? If you’re Lyralen Kaye, you stay home, devise a web series, then collect accolades, including an award from the the Los Angeles Internation Film Festival’s Indie Short Fest. Kaye brought 23 actors from around the world together through Zoom to create Assigned Female at Birth: A Web Series about Some Bodies.
A hybrid narrative/documentary series Assigned Female at Birth (AFAB) is the story of 23 AFAB people fighting everything they've been taught about their bodies never being good enough.
Season One of the docu-dramedy is on YouTube. Season Two drops later this month.
Creative director, executive producer and founder of Another Country Productions , Lyralen talks with me about body image, gender identity, connection and creativity.
Lyralen Kaye, SAG-AFTRA, AEA, is an actor, screenwriter, playwright, and director. Their acting film/web credits include Assigned Female at Birth, The Last Poker Game, 27 Dresses, The Naturals, The Man at the Door and Mama’s Boy. In Theatre they have played such classic roles as Emma in Betrayal, Lulu in The Dutchman and Polina in The Seagull. Assigned Female at Birth has five times won Best Web and New Media in film festivals world wide. Lyralen's first screenplay for Saint John the Divine in Iowa won them a place in the 2015 Writers Lab supported by Meryl Streep, was a finalist for the 2018 Blacklist Women in Film Lab and 2011 Roy W. Dean Award and was a semi-finalist for the 2011 Pride Plays and Films Award. In 2018 Lyralen won the San Francisco Best in Fringe and Techie Best in Fringe for their solo show, My Preferred Pronoun Is We. Lyralen has also been nominated for the 1997 Pushcart Prize in fiction and won the 1998 Boston Amazon Slam Poetry Finals. They are a radical queer activist and social justice artist.