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Carolyn Gage (b. 1952) is an American playwright (and
theatrical director and actor), and an activist on lesbian and feminist issues. Gage was
a Guest Lecturer at Bates College in 1998-99. The author of five
books on lesbian theatre and fifty plays, musicals, and one-woman
shows, she specializes in non-traditional roles for women,
especially those reclaiming famous lesbians whose stories have been
distorted or erased from history. The Second Coming of Joan of
Arc and Selected Plays (Outskirts Press, 2008) was named the
national winner of the 2008 Lambda Literary Award in Drama.
Gage tours internationally in her one-woman play, The Second
Coming of Joan of Arc, a play which was named national
finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in drama, and which has been
featured on National Public Radio. In 2008, her collection of
one-acts, Nine Short Plays was published, along with a
collection of her historical plays, The Second Coming of Joan
of Arc and Selected Plays. In 2009, she premiered her new
musical, Babe: An Olympic Musical in Phoenix and also
workshopped it in Minneapolis.
Gage's play, Ugly Ducklings, 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.
Work
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.
Gage's musical, The Amazon All-Stars is the first lesbian
full book musical ever published by a mainstream play publisher.
Published by Applause Books, it is the title work of an anthology
of lesbian plays that was a national finalist for the Lambda
Literary Award. Her manual on lesbian theatre production, Take
Stage! How to Direct and Produce a Lesbian Play, was published
by Scarecrow Press. Gage also wrote Monologues and Scenes for
Lesbian Actors, the first collection of its kind in the world.
The University of Oregon has acquired
her personal papers for their Special Collections Archive.
Gage's work has been endorsed by Andrea Dworkin, Mary Daly, Phyllis Chesler, Diana E.H. Russell, Jewelle Gomez and
John
Stoltenberg. Gage was named contributing editor to the national
feminist quarterly On The Issues. Gage has also been
published in the Dramatists Guild Quarterly,
Trivia, Sinister Wisdom, Lesbian
Ethics, The Lesbian Review of Books, The Gay and
Lesbian Review, The Michigan Quarterly Review and
Lambda Book Report. Gage has written the first meditation
book for feminist activists, Like There's No Tomorrow:
Meditations for Women Leaving Patriarchy.
Books
- The Second Coming of Joan of Arc and Selected Plays (2008),
a collection of Gage's historical plays that was the national
winner of the 2008 Lambda Literary Award in Drama.
- Nine Short Plays, a collection of nine of Gage's best
short plays.
- The Spindle and Other Lesbian Fairy Tales, a
collection of four short stories and one full-length play.
- Take Stage! How to Direct and Produce a Lesbian Play,
a manual on lesbian theatre production.
- Sermons for a Lesbian Tent Revival, thirteen sermons
on evangelical radical feminism.
- Monologues and Scenes for Lesbian Actors: Revised and
Expanded (2009), the acclaimed first and only collection of
its kind ever published.
- Like There's No Tomorrow: Meditations for Women Leaving
Patriarchy, a book of meditations on feminist activism.
- Sermons for a Lesbian Tent Revival
- The Spindle and Other Lesbian Fairy Tales
- The Second Coming of Joan of Arc and Selected Plays
(Outskirts Press 2008)
- Nine Short Plays
- Black Eye and Other Short Plays
- Three Comedies
- The Triple Goddess: Three Plays
- The Second Coming of Joan of Arc and Other Plays (Herbooks,
Inc. 1994)
- Monologues and Scenes for Lesbian Actors: Revised and
Expanded (Outskirts Press 2009)
- Like There's No Tomorrow: Meditations for Women Leaving
Patriarchy
- Take Stage! How to Direct and Produce a Lesbian
Play
Plays
- Second Coming of Joan of Arc, a one-woman show in
which Joan of Arc
speaks to contemporary audiences,
- Ugly Ducklings, about blossoming lesbian love and homophobia at a girls'
summer camp,
- The Anastasia Trials in the Court of Women, an
audience participation courtroom drama presenting the trial of five
women who betrayed the Anastasia
Romanov of Russia,
- Thanatron, a dysfunctional family comedy
- The Amazon All-Stars is a musical, the first lesbian
full-book musical published by a mainstream publisher
- The A-Mazing Yamashita and the Gold-diggers of 2008
(One-act play)
- The Amazon All-stars (Musical)
- Amy Lowell: in Her Own Words (One-woman show)
- The Anastasia Trials in the Court of Women
(Full-length play)
- Artemisia and Hildegarde (One-act play)
- Babe:An Olympian Musical (Musical)
- Battered on Broadway (One-act play)
- Bite My Thumb (One-act play)
- Blackeye (10-minute play)
- The Boundary Trial of John Proctor (One-act play)
- Calamity Jane Sends a Message to Her Daughter (One-act
play)
- Coming About (Full-length play)
- Cookin' with Typhoid Mary (One-act play)
- The Countess and the Lesbians (One-act play)
- The Drum Lesson (One-act play)
- Entr'acte (One-act play)
- Esther and Vashti (Full-length play)
- The Evil That Men Do: the Story of Thalidomide
(One-act play)
- Extravagant Love: the Life of Violette LeDuc
(One-woman show)
- The Goddess Tour (Full-length play)
- Harriet Tubman Visits a Therapist (One-act play)
- Heterosexuals Anonymous (One-act play)
- Jane Addams and the Devil Baby (One-act play)
- A Labor Play (One-act play)
- The Ladies' Room (Five-minute play)
- The Last Reading of Charlotte Cushman (One-woman
show)
- Leading Ladies (Musical)
- Louisa May Incest (One-act play)
- Mason-dixon (One-act play)
- The Obligatory Scene (One-act play)
- The Parmachene Belle (One-act play)
- Patricide (One-act play)
- The P.E. Teacher (One-act play)
- The Pele Chant (One-act play)
- The Poorly-Written Play Festival (One-act play)
- Radicals (One-act play)
- The Rules of the Playground (One-act play)
- Sappho in Love (Full-length play)
- The Second Coming of Joan of Arc (One-woman show)
- Souvenirs of Eden (One-act play)
- The Spindle (Full-length play)
- Stigmata (Full-length play)
- Thanatron (Full-length play)
- Ugly Ducklings (Full-length play)
- Women on the Land (Musical)
Awards
- 2009 Residency, Wurlitzer Foundation, Taos, New
Mexico
- 2009 National Winner, Lambda Literary Award in Drama, The
Second Coming of Joan of Arc and Selected Plays
- Janine C. Rae Cultural Award for the Advancement of Women's
Culture (2002)
- National Finalist, Lambda Literary Award in Drama, for The
Second Coming of Joan of Arc and Other Plays
- Winner, Maine Playwrights Award, Maine Writers and Publishers
Alliance, for The Poorly-Written Play Festival (2007)
- Nominee, Michael MacLiammor Award (Best Female Performer),
Dublin International Gay Theatre Festival (2007)
- Nominee, American Theatre Critics Association's annual
ATCA/Steinberg New Play Award, for Ugly Ducklings
- Winner, Curve Magazine's National Lesbian Theatre
Award, for Ugly Ducklings
- National Finalist, Association for Theatre in Higher Education
Jane Chambers Award, for The Anastasia Trials in the Court of
Women
- National winner, Samuel French Off-Off Broadway Festival, for
Harriet Tubman Visits a Therapist
- Lynda Hart Memorial Grant, Astraea Lesbian Justice Foundation
(2005)
- Thanatron named among "Best Productions of 2003" by
the Portland Phoenix in Portland, Maine
- Finalist, Maine Playwrights Award for Parmachene Belle
(2003)
- National winner, $3000 Arch and Bruce Brown Foundation Grant
for best play, The Last Reading of Charlotte Cushman
- Acquisition of personal papers for University of Oregon Special
Collections Archive
- Angus L.
Bowmer Award for Drama from the Oregon Institute of Literary Arts for
The Second Coming of Joan of Arc
- Walden Writer's Fellowship from Lewis & Clark
College
- Oregon Literary Fellowship writer's grant from Oregon Institute
of Literary Arts
- Oregon Arts Commission
Individual Artist Grant
- National Winner, Nancy Dean Distinguished Playwriting
Award
- Eleanor Humes Haney Fund Grant
- New York Open Meadows Foundation Grant
- Maine Arts Commission, Good Idea Grant
- Winner Best Stageplay, Moondance International Women's Film
Festival, Boulder, Colorado, for Sappho in
Love
- National semi-finalist for the Eileen Heckart Senior Drama
Competition, Ohio State University, for
The Pele Chant
- National finalist, George P. Kernodle One-Act Play Competition,
University of Arkansas,
Poorly-Written Play Festival
- National finalist, John Gassner New Play Festival, Stony Brook
University (NY) for The Spindle
- National semi-finalist, Association for Theatre in Higher
Education One-Act Play Competition for The Pele Chant
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