Last night was Pride Night at the Oakland A's inter-league baseball game against the San Diego Padres.
While a major focus of the event was the honoring of baseball's first openly gay baseball player, Glenn Burke, who played for the Dodgers and A's from 1976 to 1979 (Burke died in 1995 of AIDS complications), the game opened with Breanna Sinclairé singing the the National Anthem. Sinclairé is believed to be the first transgender person to sing the Star Spangled Banner at a professional sporting event.
Sinclairé is a soprano with four and a half octave range who is the first transgender graduate of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.
For those in the area Sinclairé is appearing at the Fresh Meat Festival tonight through Saturday and will be a guest artist with the San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus June 26-27.
Here is a sample of Breanna's talent:
Next Tuesday will mark Nicole Maines' debut as an actress when she appears on the show Royal Pains on USA Network. Maines will play the role of a transgender teenage choreographer who gets treated by Dr. Hank (Mark Feuerstein) when she has a dangerous reaction to her hormone treatment.
Playing Anna on Royal Pains was an incredible experience and the amount of warmth and encouragement that I received from the cast and crew was so unexpected, but welcome.
Everyone’s words were so supportive and kind and they made me feel part of the cast immediately, and made my very first television acting experience a pleasure – one I will remember forever.
--Maines
For the episode, USA Network has partnered with PFLAG to raise awareness of people who are transgender and to provide support and resources to viewers. Feuerstein will appear in a PSA that will run during the episode and on social media.
In telling this story, casting a transgender person was essential to us. The opportunity to have Nicole Maines, a transgender teen herself, who in her acting debut proved to be a very talented actress as well, was deeply gratifying. Nicole brought the character of Anna, written beautifully by Carol Flint, to life, and depicted her with strength, intelligence and humanity, all traits Nicole possesses herself. We are very proud of this storyline, of the episode and of the opportunity to work with Nicole.
--Michael Rauch and Andrew Lenchewski, executive producers