About this project

UPDATE #2: DOUBLE YOUR PLEDGE! With your help, I've already blown past my $275 fundraising goal. Over the past week, you have pledged $900 to help me get to DC and back, as well as pay for the many other show related costs I'll be incurring over the next few months. But someone has upped the ante. One generous donor, John Montgomery, has pledged to double any ammount raised on Kickstarter, above and beyond the current total of $900. Pledge one dollar? It becomes two. Pledge five dollars? It becomes ten. Pledge twenty-five follars? Well, you get the picture. I expect to have approximately $4,500 in total show expenses to produce No Gender Left Behind. But with your help, I'm not worried in the slightest.

UPDATE: Because of your generous (and, quite frankly, overwhelming) help, I'll be going to DC in March. We reached the $275 goal! But 'No Gender Left Behind' will continue to accrue costs until its final performance in September. Right now, I'm estimating the final expenses to run somewhere around $4,500. Any money above and beyond what is raised to get me to DC will go toward the producing and staging 'No Gender Left Behind.' And remember, for a pledge of $50 or more, you're rewarded with a pair of tickets to any performance of 'No Gender Left Behind.' 

  In the Fall of 2010, I was fired from a teaching position for being a transgender woman. The experience left me wondering what America is teaching its children – and its adults – about gender, conformity, and being just a little bit different.

'No Gender Left Behind,' to debut at the Kansas City Fringe Festival in July 2011, is my solo performance (currently in development) where I aim to explore such questions as: What does it mean to be a boy or a girl in America? How do kids' perceptions of gender differ from adults? What happens when people cross the gender line?

To get as many perspectives as possible, I'm planning to travel to Washington DC for the National Center for Transgender Equality's Lobby Day, March 13-15, 2011. Filming and recording interactions with fellow trans women and men in DC, as well as politicians and every-day people on the street, will give me valuable material to use in 'No Gender Left Behind.' .

That's where you come in. I need your help to fund my trip to DC. It's not too expensive: Amtrak is less than $200 round trip, plus splitting a hotel with another Lobby Day attendant or crashing on someone's couch. But I can't afford to do it alone. Every dollar you donate gets me that much closer to being able to speak with people on the train, on the streets of DC, in the House and Senate. (Not to mention getting you nifty backers rewards!)

For more about my past work, upcoming shows, and videos of my material, check out my website at www.rebeccakling.com