Playwright and co-director P. Carl and line producer Emma Watt at the first rehearsal of “Becoming a Man” at Loeb Drama Center in Cambridge’s Harvard Square.
(Photo: Ken Yotsukura)

For 50 years, P. Carl lived as a girl and then a queer woman. He built a career and a loving marriage before deciding to affirm his gender at a pivotal political moment in America – a story recounted in the acclaimed memoir “Becoming a Man” and now brought to an American Repertory Theater’s production.

“As a trans person, I spent most of my life with my head in a book, imagining other lives, other bodies and other histories,” Carl said in a press release. “‘Becoming a Man’ is about surviving, becoming embodied and learning to live.”

Kirkus called “Becoming a Man: The Story of a Transition,” published in 2021, a “passionate, eloquent memoir” that “illuminates the joy, courage, necessity and risk-taking of his gender transition and the ways his loved ones became affected and eventually enriched by it.”

The one-act stage adaptation, also by Carl, takes the same journey. It asks “When we change, can the people we love come with us?” and every performance has a 20-minute “Act II” in which a local leader, scholar or activist does an audience Q&A to ask it explicitly.

Petey Gibson portrays Carl in performances co-directed by Carl and Tony Award-winner Diane Paulus at the Loeb Drama Center in Harvard Square. “Becoming a Man” opens Wednesday and runs through March 10.

Tickets from $35 are available here, with discounts available to students and ticket-buyers under 25, as well as Blue Star families, EBT cardholders, seniors and Harvard faculty and staff.