FEATURE
Living History, Living Gender:
Costumed Interpretation from a Transgender Perspective
The village at Hale Farm & Village, at sunset. Photo courtesy of Kevyn Breedon and Tony Pankuch.
Hale Farm & Village Museum is a living history village located in Peninsula, Ohio, within the boundaries of the Cuyahoga Valley National Park. The museum interprets nineteenth-century life in Ohio’s Western Reserve through a reconstructed village of thirty-two historic structures, a team of costumed interpreters, and craft demonstrations.
In 2019, two transgender educators, Tony Pankuch (they/them) and Kevyn Breedon (he/they), worked as costumed interpreters at Hale Farm & Village. Together they grappled with gendered costuming, visitor expectations, and the challenges of being trans in a living history setting. In this article, the two friends reflect on their experience.
On Costumes and Changing Rooms
Kevyn Breedon
So, when I anticipated working at a place like Hale Farm, I thought I was going to be the only LGBTQ+ person in the room. There was a good possibility that might be the case, and there was a good possibility I might be the first trans person. And then I arrived at the first morning meeting, and I heard you speaking. I'm like, “Okay, I’m not the only LGBTQ+ person in the room.” I hadn’t even laid eyes upon you.
Tony Pankuch
Yeah, I saw you across the room, and I just immediately got gender nonconforming vibes from you. And in an interpretation environment where the clothing is such a big part of it, it felt really powerful to see another person who, you know— obviously, I was not the only one in that moment who was having some feelings about the changing room that I was being asked to use and the options of clothing that were available for me.
Kevyn
Yeah, my first time in the men’s dressing room, I hid in the little stall within the room. Like, absolutely, I'm not going to be changing outside of the stall. And then one coworker, I could tell, with his eyes was like, “Oh, okay, what's happening here? I’m not sure what to do about this situation,” but he was being as kind and polite as possible and wanting me to feel comfortable. And then another coworker was being more vocal about not understanding it. Wondering aloud, “What the hell is going on here?”
So I just skedaddled out of the dressing room like, “Never again.” And it was difficult finding clothing that could fit me and look masculine.
Tony
In the men’s changing room, I never changed outside of the little stall that was in there. I very much valued my privacy in that space. I'm also someone who has just never felt comfortable changing in, you know, men's changing rooms. Period.
Kevyn Breedon, dressed in his costume attire during Hale Farm & Village’s annual Holiday Lantern Tours. Photo by Tony Pankuch.
Tony Pankuch, taking a selfie in the Salt Box House while wearing their favorite blue floral patterned blouse. Photo by Tony Pankuch.
Kevyn
I just went to the green room [for events and guest speakers]. But that was nice. It was like, “I have my own room.”
Tony
The fact that you actually had your own space is not something I realized at the time! I continued to go into the men's room to change, and I just sort of hunkered down and got used to it. I didn’t realize that there was a second option available to me that wasn’t the men's room.
Kevyn
I didn't ask. [laughs]
Tony
Oh, you just chose to go in there. You just made it your space!
Kevyn
No one told me to do that. I didn't ask anyone permission. I just started doing that.
Tony
Well, that does make me curious about the hiring process at Hale Farm. You, more than I was at the time, were a much more visibly trans person. What was the process of talking about what clothing you would be allowed to wear and how you would be presenting yourself in that space?
Kevyn
I don't think I said anything about it or asked permission about it. Long before hiring, I remember thinking how fun it would be to work at Hale Farm. But it would be torture because I would have to dress as a woman. So I didn't apply. But eventually I reached a place, I think, when I applied in 2019, where I had “Kevyn” on a document or two. I had been going by “Kevyn” for a while now, and I was hired as Kevyn.
And then after I got used to Hale Farm a bit, I finally sat down with [our supervisor] to say, “So, I'm transgender.” And she basically said, “If you need anything from me, please let me know.”
Tony
That's really good. I mean, it's interesting because I was very early in my transition when I started working at Hale Farm. I think for the most part, at that point in my transition, I was still being read as a flamboyant, cisgender gay man for the most part. Sort of theater kid energy.
And for me, I never questioned that. When I'm in this space, I'm just going to have to wear the men's clothing that's in the men's room. But very quickly I started scouring the wardrobe for, like, the most foppish clothing I could find. There was this costume expert, who worked at Western Reserve Historical Society and would come down every now and then to work with the wardrobes. One time she actually came up to me specifically with this blue blouse. And I immediately loved it. It was just this light baby blue with a small, subtle floral pattern on it. And it was just sort of frilly and androgynous enough to make me feel gender euphoric.
Kevyn
Let the readers know that you are wearing all blue, right now.
Tony
I may have a favorite color. [laughs] But yeah, I tried to be as gender nonconforming as I could in the men's wardrobe. But the thought never occurred to me that I could ever ask to put on a hoop skirt or something. And I wonder what the reaction would have been to that.
Kevyn
It would have been controversial.
Tony
Yeah, for sure. And there’s a bit of a double standard—
Kevyn
Well, transmisogyny.
Tony
Absolutely, yeah. That's transmisogyny. To a certain extent, masculine clothing has been normalized on women's bodies in the present day. So, an AFAB [Assigned Female at Birth] person might not necessarily get the same pushback in that space.
The village at Hale Farm & Village. Photo by Tony Pankuch.
On Visitor Reactions
Kevyn
At Hale Farm, I was early in my medical transition, but not my social transition. I was visibly androgynous, like the most androgynous place in my life. I had a voice that's somewhere in between a typical man or woman's vocal range… and a mustache. And very much an androgynous way of being. And men's clothing. And I used the name “Kevyn.” And I had huge tits. [Laughs]
There's no hiding it. I mean, I was wearing a binder even when it was starting to get hot out. How am I going to survive the summer at Hale Farm in a binder? But anyhow, I would go through my whole spiel with the kids, and I’d thank the audience for listening, and then say, “I will now take three questions.” A not insignificant number of times, the first question was, “Are you a boy or a girl?” And they genuinely didn't know. And I could tell other kids were curious.
Tony
How did you answer that question?
Kevyn
I would just smile and nod, and say “I’m wearing men's clothing” and quickly go on to the next question. Didn't give anyone a chance to start a discussion about it. Not because I'm not okay having that conversation with kids. I've had it hundreds of times before in other workplaces. But I don't want a school to not come to Hale Farm because a trans person started having that conversation during their visit.
One time, there was a class from this Montessori school, or Montessori-adjacent school. And these inquisitive young people, one of them was more persistent than any of the other kids in asking. “No, but really, are you a boy or girl?” They weren't going to let it go. I think I just sped through that and wasn't willing to engage in that conversation. But the teacher felt the need to apologize profusely, and thanked me for how well I handled it. And we just had a great conversation.
Tony
Did you ever have any odd interactions with adult visitors, when we were open to the public?
Kevyn
Maybe some looks. Maybe a question, but I doubt it.
Tony
See for me, I was mainly being read as a man –
Kevyn
But you were a dandy man, happy to tell the children about your favorite recipe!
The interior of the Salt Box House at Hale Farm & Village, where interpreters discuss domestic life in nineteenth-century Ohio. Photo courtesy of Kevyn Breedon and Tony Pankuch.
Tony
Absolutely! I always loved working in the Salt Box House, which was all about the “domestic sphere” of the time. Cooking, cleaning, mending.
Kevyn
I could tell it was gender euphoric for you! [laughs]
Tony
Oh, it was the best. And sometimes, adults would sort of question why I was interpreting that space. I basically said something like, “Domestic work needs to be done. Men need food and clean clothes, too! Even in the 1800s, not every household is the same.”
Tony Pankuch, speaking next to their poster presentation at the 2025 American Alliance of Museums Conference. Photo courtesy of the American Alliance of Museums.
On Gendered Interpretation
Kevyn
I remember the schoolhouse building was a particularly gender-segregated space at Hale Farm and other living history villages. That's what we did for fun in my family, going to living history museums. And those gender-segregated spaces were extremely uncomfortable for me as a kid. I did not enjoy going through that while I was trying to have fun on a family vacation!
And [working at Hale Farm], I was very adamant that I'm not going to spend any amount of the little time that I have with these kids talking about corporal punishment or public humiliation. And [our supervisor] and I were on the same page. I'm not going to have all the boys sit over here and all the girls sit over here or make them enter through different entrances. I'm not even going to talk about that. I don't need to simulate that experience for museum visitors, you know?
Tony
So what did you talk about?
Kevyn
I would say to them, “Have you been learning about manners in your school? You know that we will remove our hats and we will sit up straight at all times, and we will bow or curtsy. Will you all please bow or curtsy?” And I didn’t tell them which one they needed to do. And I said this every single time that I was greeting a group of kids. And once, I said that to a group of all boys from an all-boys school. But all the teachers were ladies. So, I wouldn't have corrected my language in any way, because a good teacher, in this experience, could be modeling what good student behavior looks like. They would also bow or curtsy. So, all the boys bowed. All the teachers stayed still. And then one teacher said, [angrily] “They're all boys!” And I just moved on! [laughs]
And then sometimes they were confused if I was, you know, a female teacher or a male teacher, and some of them spent the entire time wondering this and waiting for their turn to ask about this. But I got to play both a little bit. Because certainly in the 1800s, there were both. I would say, “You could be a woman that's working in the summertime with the seven year olds! They will learn all their letters, and they will remember you for the rest of their lives. Or maybe you'll be like James Garfield.” And I start going on a little bit about James Garfield, and the men teaching in the winter when there isn’t outdoor work to be done. And making sure those older boys don't take over the school! And I’d put on a more male voice. So, I'm being this gentle, nurturing, feminine figure, and then I’m doing something that's more masculine.
Kevyn Breedon, finding fossils and macroinvertebrates with students in his current role as Program Instructor at the Conservancy for the Cuyahoga Valley National Park. Photo courtesy of Kevyn Breedon.
Tony
It's really interesting to me that people brought so much gendered baggage to the schoolhouse. I also tried to make it relatively gender neutral in terms of, you know, not talking about the division of boys would do this, girls would do this. And teachers or parents would sometimes be persistent in pushing that. Or, you know, you mentioned the historic reality that a man or woman could be teaching in the schoolhouse during the very wide timeframe the Hale Farm covered. And yet, I would have parents or teachers remark upon how strange it was that I was in the schoolhouse. Claiming that I wouldn't normally be teaching because I was presenting as a man.
Kevyn
And they’re so wrong in the history that they're throwing at you!
Tony
Exactly. [laughs] I wonder if it was, in part, due to their own visits to the museum as children. Right? Like, I wonder how much we were sort of correcting for the very gendered interpretation of earlier decades.
Kevyn
You and I had a conversation about this once. “You're going to have mean teachers, and you’re going to have kind teachers.” It’s just like that. You're going to have some communities, cultures, villages, regions of the country that were aggressively policing gender. And then some are going to be more egalitarian. Just like it is today!
Tony
Exactly! You know, I thought sometimes about what I was bringing to the table as a very flamboyant figure who was teaching about the domestic sphere. Or going on about the lavish decorations in the fancier Goldsmith House. Regardless of whether I was being read as a foppish, flamboyant man or if I was being read in this nonbinary way, I was not historically inaccurate. We know that flamboyant men and trans people existed at this time. There isn’t one single archetype that all of the men at this museum have to play. In fact, it's less historically accurate if we're all trying to be this paragon of 19th century gender roles. Even if I am giving theater kid energy – there were theater kids in the 19th century! I mean, we may not call them theater kids, but these personalities existed.
On Transgender History
Kevyn
I never really got into trans history in the 1800s. But when I was working at Hale, I spent a lot of time learning about Thoreau and Emerson, who they were as young men or teachers. As inspiration for a character, maybe. But I also learned about Joseph Lobdell, who spent some time in Ohio. He was a trans man, educator, taught at the singing school, musician, seduced all the ladies with his amazing singing voice. One person even wrote that she would linger outside just to hear “the singing man singing from the hills.” And he has a career as the sharpest marksman in the area. If you need someone to hunt a bear on the edge of town, this is the guy you got to call.
And his story ends pretty tragically. Getting run out of town repeatedly. Falling in love with a woman, getting chased out of town. Eventually he finds a love of his life. They find each other in the poor house, and at one point they're living in caves with a domesticated bear! [laughs] But then he ends up in an asylum. And we don't know when he dies. It's possible that he just rotted away for the rest of his life. And his ex, or widow, if you will, was trying to get him out of there the entire time. And you know, that confirms all my worst fears. But it was inspiring to find someone that I could relate to so much, that was so outdoorsy and a singer and an educator.
Tony
And you know, it obviously relates to you very personally. But it also feels powerful that you had this specific person who spent time in Ohio that you could point to. Obviously, we don't need a justification to be trans at the historic village museum. We know that there were trans people. But it is nice to have a specific guy!
Joseph Lobdell, a transgender man who worked as a marksman, musician, and educator in the 19th century. Photo courtesy of Bambi Lobdell.
Kevyn
And he could have gotten out of the asylum if he was willing to just be a woman and wear a dress. And he was not willing to do that. It gave him no advantage to continue living as a man, but he did it anyway.
Tony
Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting. You see that a lot in the history of the American West.
Kevyn
Because Ohio really was the wild west! [laughs]
Tony
Yes! I'm specifically thinking of Peter Boag’s Re-Dressing America's Frontier Past, a book that’s very much focused on the trans history of the American West. There are countless examples of transmasculine people, but they’ve been labeled as women who just needed to disguise themselves in order to survive in the West. And yet, you look at the actual reality of their lives, and many of them were continuing to live as men even when that issue of safety was no longer a motivating factor.
Cover image from Re-Dressing America's Frontier Past by Peter Boag. Photo courtesy of University of California Press.
On Being Visible
Tony
Would you work at a place like Hale Farm again? A very gendered nineteenth-century living history environment?
Kevyn
If I could work at a place that paid more, I wouldn’t be opposed to, yeah, playing a man. It'd be easier now!
Tony
Yeah! You've got the full beard.
Kevyn
Yeah, no one would be asking, with their limited three questions, if I was a boy or girl.
Tony
I don't think I would work in a space like that again. I know myself now to be this very androgynous person. And I think even if I was given a pass to dress in more feminine attire, I still don't think it would feel right.
Tony Pankuch hosting a tour at the Cummings Center for the History of Psychology in Akron, Ohio. Photo courtesy of Tony Pankuch.
Kevyn
What if there were other visibly queer and trans people working there, and they're all having a gay old time?
Tony
I think I would be more likely to work there! But also, that kind of environment – there are a lot of preconceived notions that people bring to history. And I think there's a lot of power in challenging those notions. I also don't know whether I would want to put myself in the position of being the person standing in the nineteenth-century village, who people are not expecting to see, and taking out all of their gendered baggage on. There’s a lot of power in that work, but it's maybe not quite the space that I would want to be in. It’s just so gender-forward, in terms of the costuming.
Kevyn
Yeah, that reminds me of how opposed I was to working in living history earlier in my transition (or pretransition), because I thought for sure they would make me dress as a woman. I thought, “Man, that must be so much fun to do that. But they would make me dress as a woman.”
Tony
I mean, I love being a visibly trans person in the education field. Like, when a visibly queer student comes to the museum and you notice they perk up when you say your pronouns. And then they’re extra engaged during the tour. I love being a trans adult, normalizing transness in an educational setting. In my current role, I can just stand there as a denizen of the twenty-first century and talk about the past. But I’m not sure I would want the pressure of presenting myself as a gendered archetype of a different time period.
Kevyn
Native educators in living history also have to put up with some horrible expectations that people bring.
Tony
Yeah, being a marginalized person in a living history setting can be harrowing work, honestly. You're carrying so much baggage in terms of gender, race, nationality, all of these things. And I don't envy anyone else who is currently in that position, even though I'm really glad there are folks from marginalized communities who are willing to step into that role.
Kevyn
And [in my current role] I have my “Trans and Proud” button on the front of my backpack and “Let Trans Kids Bloom” on the back of my backpack. And I get lots of kids saying, “I like your button. I support you.”
Tony
It is the most affirming thing to have that, to see someone else's queerness and be seen.
Kevyn
I wish I could have had more experiences like that at Hale Farm.
Tony
Me too. But at least we had each other, you know? If I had worked at Hale Farm and I hadn't had you and the other queer educators working there, I don't think I would have gotten through that full season as easily as I did. And I appreciate that.
Tony currently works as the Education and Outreach Coordinator at the Cummings Center for the History of Psychology in Akron, Ohio. Kevyn is the Program Instructor at the Conservancy for Ohio’s Cuyahoga Valley National Park. The two continue to meet up for hikes, museum visits, and local events.
Kevyn Breedon leading campers in singing “All the Rivers Run” at the Cuyahoga Valley Environmental Education Center. Photo courtesy of Kevyn Breedon.
