Lucas Bouk

Lucas Bouk is an American opera singer and actor from Rochester, New York. He came out in 2018 as a trans man and played his first role as an openly trans man in a jazz opera character written with him in mind. A play about his transitioning was staged in 2018 and revived in 2019. In June 2019, he became the first openly transgender opera singer in a featured role written for a transgender singer in Stonewall.

Education and personal life Lucas Bouk grew up in Rochester, New York in a conservative environment, with "misunderstanding, misattunement, and pain" from his conflicted gender identity.

Bouk began transitioning physically with testosterone and retraining as a baritone in 2021, stating that COVID-19 lockdowns gave him time to retrain that he had previously believed he would not have.

Career Before coming out, Bouk sang a series of cabaret evenings featuring famous songs for female characters, by Stephen Sondheim, Kurt Weill, Jason Robert Brown, George Gershwin, Cole Porter, and Rodgers & Hammerstein, to "become comfortable inhabiting female characters onstage that I might be able to feel more confident in my body in my actual life". Later he focused on female opera characters, “trapped by circumstance, society and gender”. with music by gay composer Felix Jarrar and libretto by Bea Goodwin.

In November 2018, Bouk and Goodwin presented “Mr. Liz Cabaret: Living in the In Between," a coming of age story and cabaret about Bouk’s coming out process, at Alchemical Studio Lab. For the one-man show they used his journal entries, photos, paintings, and memories. As One is a newer opera which has already been performed around the world, telling the story with two characters, Hannah Before and Hannah After, who share insights into the transitioning experience. Bouk portrayed Hannah After.

In June 2019, Bouk played a featured character in Stonewall, an opera about the 1969 Stonewall riots which had its world premiere in conjunction with Stonewall 50 – WorldPride NYC 2019. Stonewall was commissioned by New York City Opera (NYCO), and features music by Iain Bell, a libretto by Mark Campbell, and direction by Leonard Foglia.

Since August 2021, he has been performing as a baritone, including roles such as Masetto and Leporello in Don Giovanni, Schaunard in La bohème, Count Almaviva in Le Nozze di Figaro, and Papageno in Die Zauberflöte. He also played the role of Hannah Before in As One in 2022 and 2023, making him the first person to portray both Hannah Before and Hannah After in As One.