The latest episode of the award-winning Story Pirates podcast features a story about a transgender prince who decides to live as his true self. The story, originally by a 10-year-old girl, was brought to life by an all trans/nonbinary cast. Listen here.
The Story Pirates take stories from kids around the world and turn them into songs and sketches performed on the podcast by the Pirates’ team and by a variety of guest actors and singers. In Season 5, Episode 6, which dropped June 30th, the segment “The Prince-ess” tells of a Princess named Rosalie who is really a prince named Frederick, but has been keeping this secret from friends. During a sleepover, Frederick finds the courage to tell his friends about his true identity—and is happier than ever.
“The Prince-ess” began as a story submitted to Story Pirates by a 10-year-old girl from Sweden. The Pirates turned it into a four-minute mini-musical, with a Broadway-esque song performed by Rivkah Reyes, a queer Filipinx-Jewish actor, musician, comedian, producer and writer from Chicago.
In an interview with Story Pirates founder Lee Overtree after the story, Ella says that her original story was a school assignment. She was very deliberate about making Frederick’s friends supportive, she explains, because “friends are friends.” Even if they were a little shocked, she says, they might have had some inkling about Frederick’s real gender. Overtree suggests that they gave him the space to tell them when he was ready.
Ella herself is a cisgender girl. While I would be skeptical about a cisgender adult writing from the perspective of a trans person, I’m willing to view Ella’s story as an attempt at understanding and acceptance. I think her story demonstrates that even young, cisgender children are perfectly capable of supporting their transgender peers. That’s not to say that we don’t need stories by transgender kids themselves—we absolutely do. But it seems that Ella’s story and attitude are heartening signs of progress towards inclusion and understanding.
Don’t just take my cisgender perspective on this, however. One of the Pirates, Petey Gibson, is a transgender man, who noted on Instagram that “It has meant the world to me to have this story chosen, an all nonbinary/trans cast bring it to life, and to work for the #1 Childrens Podcast In America who not only sees the value in all kids bopping along to this, but also has enough trans/enby cast members to easily make it happen.” Watch Gibson listen to and react to the segment and to Ella’s interview in the two Instagram posts below.
(Gibson also tells us more about himself in this “Pirate of the Week” video from a few years back—where he notes that actor and trans woman Laverne Cox is his hero for speaking out on trans issues.)
Listen to the full Story Pirates episode here or in your favorite podcast app. It includes Ella’s story and interview and several other stories, and the sound quality is better than in the Instagram posts above.