Kelly Clarkson Show producer steps into live theater as your 'friendly neighborhood trans lady'

With no theater experience beyond being “third reindeer from the left” in a fifth-grade Christmas pageant, Caragh Donley has brought her gender transition story to the stage.

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Donley, a transgender woman who is a senior producer on The Kelly Clarkson Show,is performing a solo show, He Said, She Says, in New York City this month.

The show premiered April 5 as part of New York City Fringe, a festival of cutting-edge plays presented by Frigid NYC, and has had two performances so far. Upcoming performances are tonight at 9:50 and Saturday at 8:40 p.m. at the Wild Project and can be viewed either in person or from home.

“It’s the product of coming out at this age — apparently it's a kind of unique story,” says Donley, 65, who came out on Clarkson’s show in November 2023.

She was approached after that and working with director-producer Robert Galinsky and producer Gina Rugolo Judd, she came up with the script, which Donley describes as “me talking to deadname me.” Offstage, Sal Cacciato, a colleague from the Clarkson show, offers the voice of her deadname self. And there’s music by Nancy Wilson of Heart, whom Donley’s known for a while. “She read a fairly early draft and got on board,” Donley says.

While He Said, She Says is offers drama, “it’s not entirely depressing,” Donley notes. “There are jokes. … I do compare being trans to Bitcoin at one point.”

Caragh Donley and flier for show(photo) Andrew Einhorn; (flier) provided

“It’s just surreal to be sitting there, trying to explain my entire life,” she adds. For her first acting experience, “I have enjoyed it immensely,” she says.

She wants the show to inform cisgender people about trans people but also to let trans people know they’re not alone. She hopes especially that trans youth will see it and that the New York engagement will be a springboard to a national tour, letting trans folks know not to doubt themselves and not to wait until their mid-60s to transition. “I really want to find a way to keep this going,” she says. “Hopefully the reception will continue to be good.”

Her show has reached a substantial audience. The first performance was sold out, and the second one nearly so. There are some tickets available for tonight and Saturday at the festival’s website.

Caragh Donley onstageCourtesy Caragh Donley

She’s aware of the importance of visibility in the face of all the anti-trans actions coming from the White House and elsewhere. “When I started working on this, it was a far different America for trans people,” she says. “It wasn’t great, but it wasn’t the gulag we’re living in now.” But she’s too old to worry about any repercussions of her visibility, she says.

Donley is grateful to all of her collaborators, plus her publicist, Shane Marshall Brown, co-president of the Press Room NYC. “None of this would have happened without all of them,” she says.

Caragh Donley with friend Erin Murphy, famed as Tabitha on BewitchedGina Rugolo Judd for Caragh Donley

She’s found that since she came out, people are accepting, once they’re convinced that the MAGA position on trans people is wrong. “I’ve heard from some corners that I’m too Pollyanna about it,” she says, but she’s committed to staying hopeful.

“I am still America’s friendly neighborhood trans lady,” she says. As for her play, she notes, “this is my way of coming out to say, just come and meet us — we’re really pretty nice.”