Carolyn Gage


Carolyn Gage is an American playwright, actor, theatrical director and author. She has written nine books on lesbian theater and sixty-five plays, musicals, and one-woman shows. A lesbian feminist, her work emphasizes non-traditional roles for women and lesbian characters.

Early life

Gage earned a master's degree in theater arts from Portland State University.

Career

Gage's best known work is The Second Coming of Joan of Arc, a one-woman play about the historical figure Joan of Arc. It has been translated into Portuguese, French, Italian, Bulgarian, and Mandarin and achieved first-class production in Brazil, starring Christiane Torloni. The script was published in The Second Coming of Joan of Arc and Selected Plays, an anthology of Gage's historical plays. The anthology was named the national winner of the 2008 Lambda Literary Award in Drama.
Other notable work includes Ugly Ducklings, which was nominated by the American Theatre Critics Association for the prestigious ATCA/ Steinberg New Play Award, an award with given annually for the best new play produced outside New York. It won a 2004 Lesbian Theatre Award from Curve magazine, and a $150,000 documentary on the play premiered in 2005 at the Frameline International Film Festival in San Francisco. In 2004, The Anastasia Trials in the Court of Women was named national finalist for the Jane Chambers Award given by the Association for Theatre in Higher Education. Harriet Tubman Visits a Therapist was presented at Actors Theatre of Louisville in the Juneteenth Festival of African American plays. It was a national winner of the Samuel French Off-Off Broadway Festival, and is included in Random House's anthology Under 30: Plays for a New Generation.
In addition to creative works, Gage has published a manual on lesbian theater production, Take Stage! How to Direct and Produce a Lesbian Play, which was published by Scarecrow Press. Gage also wrote Monologues and Scenes for Lesbian Actors.
The author of numerous feminist essays, Gage was named contributing editor to the national feminist quarterly On The Issues and has published in the journals Trivia, Sinister Wisdom, Lesbian Ethics, and off our backs, as well as The Lesbian Review of Books, The Gay and Lesbian Review, and Lambda Book Report. Other publications include The Michigan Quarterly Review and Dramatists Guild Quarterly.
Gage served as a guest lecturer at Bates College from 1998 to 1999.
The University of Oregon archive acquired her personal papers in 2004.
In December 2014, Gage was awarded the first Lifetime Achievement Award given by Venus Theatre, founded by Deborah Randall in Laurel, Maryland. During the ceremony also celebrating the theatre's 50th production, she revived the memories of actresses, playwrights and directors Eva Le Gallienne, Henrietta Vinton Davis and Minnie Maddern Fiske who faced tremendous opposition to their work from the cultural establishment of their time. The American activist and playwright John Stoltenberg, lifelong companion of radical feminist Andrea Dworkin, said about Gage's acceptance speech:In 2018, Gage was interviewed for an investigation about how invisible disabilities tend to be hidden by creative professionals in the American show business in order not to experience discrimination, having herself concealed for years her myalgic encephalomyelitis, or chronic fatigue syndrome, she had had since 1988.

Works

Books

The Second Coming of Joan of Arc and Selected Plays Nine Short Plays Starting from Zero: One-Act Plays About Lesbians in Love The Spindle and Other Lesbian Fairy Tales Take Stage! How to Direct and Produce a Lesbian Play Sermons for a Lesbian Tent Revival Supplemental Sermons for a Lesbian Tent Revival Hotter Than Hell: More Sermons for a Lesbian Tent Revival Monologues and Scenes for Lesbian Actors: Revised and Expanded Like There's No Tomorrow: Meditations for Women Leaving Patriarchy Black Eye and Other Short Plays Three Comedies The Triple Goddess: Three Plays The Second Coming of Joan of Arc and Other Plays

Plays

Second Coming of Joan of Arc, a one-woman show in which Joan of Arc speaks to contemporary audiencesUgly Ducklings, about blossoming lesbian love and homophobia at a girls' summer campThe Anastasia Trials in the Court of Women, an audience participation courtroom drama presenting the trial of five women who betrayed the Anastasia Romanov of RussiaThanatron, a dysfunctional family comedyThe Amazon All-Stars is a musical, the first lesbian full-book musical published by a mainstream publisherThe A-Mazing Yamashita and the Gold-diggers of 2008 The Amazon All-stars Amy Lowell: in Her Own Words The Anastasia Trials in the Court of Women Artemisia and Hildegarde Babe: An Olympian Musical Battered on Broadway Bite My Thumb Blackeye The Boundary Trial of John Proctor Calamity Jane Sends a Message to Her Daughter Coming About Cookin' with Typhoid Mary The Countess and the Lesbians The Clarity of Pizza The Drum Lesson Entr'acte Esther and Vashti The Evil That Men Do: The Story of Thalidomide Extravagant Love: the Life of Violette LeDuc The Goddess Tour Harriet Tubman Visits a Therapist Heterosexuals Anonymous Jane Addams and the Devil Baby A Labor Play The Ladies' Room The Last Reading of Charlotte Cushman Leading Ladies Louisa May Incest Mason-dixon The Obligatory Scene The Parmachene Belle Patricide The P.E. Teacher The Pele Chant The Poorly-Written Play Festival Radicals The Rules of the Playground Sappho in Love The Second Coming of Joan of Arc Souvenirs of Eden The Spindle Stigmata Thanatron Ugly Ducklings Valerie Solanas at Matteawan
  • ''Women on the Land''

Awards