About Us

A Play By FLORENCE KLEIN

Nate came out as a trans man years ago. Confidently. He’s made friends, had lovers, created community as a proud trans man. Then, he joins a book club, not realizing it is a “space for only women and femmes.” In this club, he starts to question whether his proud identity is his true one, whether it is proud at all, and if he cares to come clean and lose the one bit of structure in his life that the book club has given him. 

Nate’s best friend Finn – also a trans man – begs Nate to be honest with himself. He thinks Nate is scared of what it means to be a man. It’s clear Nate believes men are scary, evil, and that all they do is hurt people. Which begs the question, is that how Nate sees Finn? 

As Finn and Nate fight, they both fall into romances. Finn, with charismatic cis gay guy Grey, who speaks his mind and sees through Finn’s proud exterior to his uncomfortable interior, the one that only dates cis men because it makes him feel like a “real man.” And Nate, with Rachel, a member of the book club, and a cis lesbian. 

With contradicting identities flying around, self-doubt eating everyone alive, and enough book references to please any English Lit professor... The FTM Book Club asks: what is queer masculinity? How do we stay sure of ourselves? And: How real is community, if we don’t understand our own? 

Photo from 2023 Living Room Reading