Cast and Creative Team Set for BECOMING A MAN World Premiere Stage Adaptation at A.R.T.

The cast and creative team has been revealed for Becoming a Man, an A.R.T.-commissioned world-premiere play about the courage—and the community—we need to become ourselves.

 

Becoming a Man is adapted by Ford Foundation Art of Change Fellow P. Carl from his acclaimed memoir of the same name. It is co-directed by Tony Award winnerDiane Paulus (Gloria: A Life, The White Card, In the Body of the World, Pippin at A.R.T.) and P. Carl (dramaturg of The White Card, an ArtsEmerson presentation of A.R.T.’s production). Becoming a Man begins performances at the Loeb Drama Center in Harvard Square, Cambridge on Friday, February 16, 2024, opens officially on Wednesday, February 21, 2024, and runs through Sunday, March 10, 2024. 

  

ABOUT BECOMING A MAN

When we change, can the people we love come with us? For fifty years, P. Carl lived as a girl and then a queer woman, building a career and a loving marriage while waiting to realize himself in full. When he decides to affirm his gender at a pivotal political moment in America, his transition puts everything—family, career, friendships—at stake.

 

Like Carl’s acclaimed memoir, the stage adaptation is about the journey to become the man Carl always knew himself to be. “As a trans person, I spent most of my life with my head in a book imagining other lives, other bodies, and other histories,” says Carl. “But reading wasn’t just about imagining myself as a man, it was about imagining, period—a way of holding myself together until the day I could viscerally feel my own existence. Becoming a Man is about surviving, becoming embodied, and learning to live.”

 

“This moving narrative illuminates the joy, courage, necessity, and risk-taking of [Carl’s] transition and the ways his loved ones became affected and eventually enriched by it. A passionate, eloquent memoir about how complex stories of humanity [and] our capacity for imagination are what give us hope.” – Kirkus

 

Petey Gibson (he/him) leads the A.R.T. production as Carl, with Justiin Davis (he/him) as Eddie and other roles, Elena Hurst (she/her, Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 at A.R.T.) as Lynette, Christopher Liam Moore (he/him, All the Way and The King Stag at A.R.T.) as Carl’s Father and other roles, Stacey Raymond (they/any) as Polly, Susan Rome (she/they) as Carl’s Mother and other roles, and Cody Sloan (he/him) as Nathan and other roles.

 

Paulus and Carl are joined on the Becoming a Man creative team by Scenic Designer Emmie Finckel (they/them), Costume Designer Qween Jean (any pronouns, Macbeth In Stride and What to Send Up When It Goes Down at A.R.T.), Lighting Designer Cha See (any pronouns, What to Send Up When It Goes Down at A.R.T.), Sound Designer and Composer Paul James Prendergast (Behind the Scenes: The Odyssey and All the Way at A.R.T), and Projection Designer Brittany Bland.Lyam B. Gabel (they/he) is the associate director.

 

Genevieve Kersh (she/her, 1776 at A.R.T.) is the production stage manager; Rachel Zucker (they/them) is the assistant stage manager. Casting is by X Casting/Victor Vazquez, CSA (he/him, Real Women Have Curves and Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 at A.R.T.).

TICKETING INFORMATION

 

Tickets from $35 are available at AmericanRepertoryTheater.org/BecomingAMan.
Discounts are available to students and ticket-buyers under age 25, Blue Star families, EBT cardholders, seniors, Harvard faculty and staff, and others. More information at AmericanRepertoryTheater.org/PlanYourVisit.

  

NOTABLE DATES

• Opening / Press Night
  Wednesday, February 21, 2024 at 7:30PM

• ArtsThursday

Thursday, February 22, 2024 at 7:30PM

A university-wide initiative sponsored by Harvard University Committee on the Arts (HUCA) that provides free public arts programming during the academic year—Tickets available February 1, more information at Harvard.edu/ArtsThursdays

• ASL Interpreted*

Sunday, March 3, 2024 at 2PM & Wednesday, March 6, 2024 at 7:30PM

• Audio Described*

Saturday, March 2, 2024 at 2PM and Thursday, March 7, 2024 at 7:30 PM

• Open Captioned*

Saturday, March 2, 2024 at 2PM and Thursday, March 7, 2024 at 7:30 PM  

• Relaxed Performance*

Sunday, March 3, 2023 at 2PM

*Book Access seats online, by contacting Access@amrep.org, or calling 617.547.8300  

 

ARTIST BIOS

 

P. CARL

(he/him; Writer/Co-Director) is a Senior Distinguished Artist in Residence, Department of Performing Arts, at Emerson College in Boston and the author of the memoir, Becoming a Man: The Story of a Transition (Simon & Schuster, 2020). He was the Spring 2020 Anschutz Fellow at Princeton University, awarded a 2017 Art of Change Fellowship from the Ford Foundation, the Berlin Prize fellowship from the American Academy for the Fall of 2018, and the Andrew W. Mellon Creative Research Residency at the University of Washington. His work has been published in The New York Times Magazine, The Boston Globe Magazine, and Lit Hub. The stage adaptation of Becoming a Man was commissioned by American Repertory Theater and will premiere in February 2024. PCarl.com

 

Diane Paulus

(she/her; Co-Director) is the Terrie and Bradley Bloom Artistic Director of the American Repertory Theater at Harvard University. A.R.T.: 1776 (Broadway/U.S. Tour); WILD: A Musical Becoming, Gloria: A Life, Jagged Little Pill, ExtraOrdinary, The White Card, In the Body of the World, Waitress,Crossing, Finding Neverland, Witness Uganda, Pippin (Tony Award, Best Revival and Best Director), The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess (Tony Award, Best Revival; NAACP Award, Best Direction), Prometheus Bound, Death and the Powers: The Robots’ Opera, Best of Both Worlds, The Donkey Show. Other work includes Cirque du Soleil’s Amaluna, Invisible Thread at Second Stage, and The Public Theater’s Tony Award-winning revival of HAIR on Broadway and London’s West End. As an opera director, her credits include The Magic Flute, the complete Monteverdi cycle, and the trio of Mozart-Da Ponte operas. She will make her Glyndebourne debut with Carmen in spring 2024. Paulus is Professor of the Practice of Theater in Harvard University’s English Department and Department of Theater, Dance & Media. She was selected for Boston Magazine’s 2022, 2020, and 2018 lists of Boston’s 100 most influential people, the 2014 Time 100, Time magazine’s annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world, and as one of Variety’s “Trailblazing Women in Entertainment for 2014.”

 

ABOUT AMERICAN REPERTORY THEATER

 

The American Repertory Theater (A.R.T.) at Harvard University is a leading force in the American theater, producing groundbreaking work that is driven by risk-taking and passionate inquiry. Terrie and Bradley Bloom Artistic Director Diane Paulus began her tenure in 2008 and co-leads the theater in partnership with Executive Director Kelvin Dinkins, Jr., who began his tenure in June 2022. A.R.T.’s mission is to expand the boundaries of theater, always including the audience as partner.

 

The A.R.T. focuses on the research and development of groundbreaking theatrical experiences, serving as a creative hub that has launched productions seen across the US and around the world. A.R.T. received the Tony Award for Best New Play for All the Way (2014); consecutive Tony Awards for Best Revival of a Musical for Pippin (2013) and The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess (2012), both of which Paulus directed. A.R.T.’s Tony Award-winning and nominated productions include1776; Jagged Little Pill; Waitress; Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812; All the Way; The Glass Menagerie; Pippin; Once; The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess. International productions include Waitress, Nice Fish, The Glass Menagerie (West End); Waitress, Pippin (Japan); Jagged Little Pill,Pippin (Australia); Sleep No More (China). Sleep No More currently runs in New York City.

 

Throughout its history, A.R.T. has been honored with many other distinguished awards including a Pulitzer Prize; a Jujamcyn Prize for outstanding contribution to the development of creative talent; the Regional Theatre Tony Award; and more than 100 Elliot Norton and IRNE Awards. 

 

As the professional theater on the campus of Harvard University, A.R.T. plays a central role in the cognitive life of the University, catalyzing discourse, interdisciplinary collaboration, and creative exchange among a wide range of academic departments, institutions, students, and faculty members. A.R.T. is also engaged in a number of multi-year initiatives with partners at Harvard that explore some of the most pressing issues of our day.

A.R.T. is dedicated to making great theater accessible to all. It builds community with its audiences, artists, students, staff, and neighbors, actively engaging community members and local students annually in project-based partnerships, workshops, conversations with artists, and other enrichment activities both at the theater and across the Greater Boston area.

 

In 2024, A.R.T. will break ground on its new home, the David E. ’93 and Stacey L. Goel Center for Creativity and Performance. Designed by Haworth Tompkins, the new center will include two flexible performance venues, rehearsal studios, teaching spaces, a spacious public lobby, and an outdoor performance yard designed to host ticketed and free programming. Porous and welcoming intentional architecture will galvanize creativity and collaboration and fuel the mission. A.R.T. expects to begin producing in the new center in 2026.

 

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