ROLE PLAY

Kaia Gerber is someone who likes to listen, learn, read books, go to the theater, ask questions, have difficult conversations, act, perform, transform, and stretch herself in everything she does. That she's an object of beauty is almost beside the point.

- Dana Spiotta

Kaia Gerber sees new plays whenever she can—particularly small, off-Broadway plays. That is how she and I came to be at a theater on the Upper East Side of Manhattan on a balmy night in September. Kaia had chosen a drama about two women confronting the consequences of the new spate of anti-abortion laws. Though neither of us knew much about the play ahead of time, Kaia is drawn to difficult subjects that can lead to interesting discussions. After an intense 70 minutes without an intermission, we were both eager to discuss what we’d just seen. We stood in front of the theater waiting for our car, wondering about the actual details of the Texas anti-abortion law described in the play. But we’d only traded a few sentences when a tall man in a quarter-zip fleece stepped forward and interrupted us. “Oh man!” he said, addressing Kaia. “Did that make any sense at all?”

Kaia regarded him with a friendly, patient half-smile— an inscrutable look that was neither inviting nor offputting. I guessed it was a Kaia specialty.

He did not wait for a response and answered his own question: “Ridiculous. I mean, it makes no sense. Once that premise came on—”

“They lost you,” Kaia said.

“Yeah,” he said. “Anyway.” And Kaia and I turned toward each other, ever so slightly closing ranks. “Alright,” he finished, and scuttled away. Then our big black car arrived, and we escaped into it. Once we were in the car, though, Kaia immediately pointed out the irony of his interrupting us. The play had been about unseen men passing laws with an appalling outcome for the pregnant woman.

“I love a man being like, ‘Did that make any sense?’” Kaia said.

We shook our heads, and laughed. “The people who are making the decisions—like that gentleman—don’t understand,” she said. After more discussion, she added, “Have you read bell hooks’s