Carolyn Gage

Carolyn Gage (born 1952) is an American playwright,[1] actor and theatrical director. She is also an activist on lesbian and feminist issues.[2] Gage was a Guest Lecturer at Bates College in 1998–99. The author of nine books on lesbian theatre and sixty-five 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,[3] a play 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.

Works

The Second Coming of Joan of Arc has been translated into Portuguese, French, Italian, Bulgarian, and Mandarin. It achieved first-class production in Brazil, starring Christiane Torloni, and has been widely produced.

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

Plays

Awards

References

  1. ↑ Goodenough, Elizabeth (September 2003). Secret spaces of childhood. University of Michigan Press. p. 8. ISBN 978-0-472-06845-6. Retrieved 1 May 2011.
  2. ↑ Day, Frances Ann (June 2000). Lesbian and gay voices: an annotated bibliography and guide to literature for children and young adults. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 71. ISBN 978-0-313-31162-8. Retrieved 1 May 2011.
  3. ↑ Goy-Blanquet, Dominique (2003). Joan of Arc, a saint for all reasons: studies in myth and politics. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. pp. 139–. ISBN 978-0-7546-3330-3. Retrieved 1 May 2011.
  4. ↑ Leavitt, Judith Walzer (1997-07-31). Typhoid Mary: Captive to the Public's Health. Beacon Press. p. 225. ISBN 978-0-8070-2103-3. Retrieved 1 May 2011.
  5. ↑ Kear, Lynn (2010-10-14). Laurette Taylor, American Stage Legend. McFarland. pp. 227–. ISBN 978-0-7864-5922-3. Retrieved 1 May 2011.
  6. ↑ Madison, D. Soyini; Hamera, Judith (2006-02-02). The SAGE handbook of performance studies. SAGE. p. 171. ISBN 978-0-7619-2931-4. Retrieved 1 May 2011.

External links