“He made me cry, his reading was so moving,” says director Natsu Onoda Power, who gave Rogers the part. Rogers, a 40-something cisgender guy (that is to say, one whose biological sex matches his gender identity), was excited about the stretch of a role, and began reaching out to the D.C. trans community to learn about their experiences.

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“All I heard back was crickets,” Rogers says. “No one was returning my calls.”

That sparked conversations within the Mosaic Theater Company, which is producing the play, and the rest of “Charm’s” cast and crew. The question of who has the right to represent whom onstage is a knotty one, but a consensus began to emerge, says Mosaic founding director Ari Roth.

“After we cast the show, we kept learning things — not only about the transgender community, but also about ourselves and how we wanted more alignment between our mission and our values,” he says. “Plus, people were not excited about a cisgender actor in this role.”

That’s why, just a month before the play’s official premiere Sunday, Onoda Power recruited Duquesne to play the lead role of Mama, and Rogers stepped into a behind-the-scenes role as the play’s associate director.

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“Was I disappointed? Yes,” Rogers says. “But I came into this process as an ally first and an actor second.”

Duquesne had initially tried out for the role of Mama, but had been passed over because of her relative lack of theater experience, Roth says. Her life experience, however, has given her a lot to draw from. Like Mama, Duquesne is a black, trans woman in her 60s.

“I remember what it was like in the bad old days, in the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s, when being trans was not chic,” she says.

A former high school teacher, Duquesne remembers how to connect with guarded teens. She also learned how to gain control of an unruly classroom: “A whisper can be as powerful as a yell,” she says. Those experiences have helped Duquesne get into the character of Mama, a woman who believes that if she can teach homeless, trans kids to respect themselves, they will be more successful when demanding respect from the world.

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“Just like Mama, I have told kids to pull their pants up more times than I can count,” Duquesne says.

Of course, there are many ways in which Duquesne is unlike her character. For instance, she identifies as gender-fluid and goes by the male name and persona Jack Eng about 20 percent of the time. Mama, on the other hand, can’t brook such modern ideas. “How ya gonna ask people to treat you like a gentleman or a lady if you’re forever switching up sides,” Mama says during “Charm,” when one of her students dresses as a woman but wants to be treated like a man.

“Mama is a lot like my mom. She’s old-school, proper and a little Southern,” Duquesne says.

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The past month has been a crash course for Duquesne, who has been practicing her lines night and day. She’s also been dressing more like Mama, in ladylike heels and skirts. As a result, the line between actor and character has begun to blur.

“The other day, I put on a little suit and saw myself in the mirror and said, ‘Oh my lord, I’m turning into my mama,’ ” she says.