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Carolyn Gage is a lesbian-feminist playwright, performer, director, and activist. The author of four books on lesbian theatre and fifty-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. |
Gage's collection of plays, The Second Coming of Joan of Arc and Other Plays was named national finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in drama. The title play has been featured on National Public Radio. A Brazilian production of the play achieved first-class production in 2001-2, and it was the top-selling show in both Rio and Sao Paolo, going on to tour the country. Gage, who has performed at the Kennedy Center, was invited to perform the show at the World Summit on Economic Sustainability in Johannesburg.
In 2007, she won the Maine Literary Award in Drama for The Poorly-Written Play Festival. Her 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 documentary film has been made about the play as part of a national anti-harassment campaign. That same year, her audience-interactive courtroom drama, 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. The play is published by Samuel French.
Her one-act play, 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. A professional reading of the play, funded by a Ford Foundation grant, was given at a national leadership conference for historically Black colleges at Howard University.
Gage's own production of Thanatron was named among "Best Productions of 2003" by the Portland Phoenix in Portland, Maine, and the show was read at the prestigious Pen and Brush Club in New York. In 2003, The Parmachene Belle, finalist for the Maine Playwrights AWard, was performed Off-Broadway at the Bleecker Street Theatre.
The Last Reading of Charlotte Cushman was national winner of the $3000 Arch and Bruce Brown Foundation Grant for best play about a lesbian historical figure. Gage offers a lecture on the life of Cushman, and the play has been published by the University of Wisconsin Press. Gage has directed a production of this work that was featured at the National Women's Music Festival and at Queerfest in Los Angeles. This production, starring Debra Wright, is currently available for touring. For booking information, contact Debra Wright.
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 has also written Scenes and Monologues for Lesbian Actors, the first collection of its kind in the world. In 2003, the University of Oregon acquired her personal papers for their Special Collections Archive.
Gage's plays have been endorsed by Andrea Dworkin, Phyllis Chesler, Diana E.H. Russell, Victoria A. Brownworth, and John Stoltenberg. Gage has served as a contributing editor to the national feminist quarterly On The Issues, and she has been published in the Dramatists Guild Quarterly, The Harvard Review, Trivia, Sinister Wisdom, Lesbian Ethics, The Lesbian Review of Books, The Lambda Book Report, The Michigan Quarterly Review and off our backs. Gage has written the first meditation book for feminist activists, Like There's No Tomorrow: Meditations for Women Leaving Patriarchy (Common Courage Press). This book has been described by feminist philosopher Mary Daly, as "a work of burning, uncompromising vision and daring."
Gage was a Guest Lecturer at Bates College in 1998-99. She has won the Oregon Playwrights Award from the Oregon Institute of Literary Arts. She has received grants from the Maine Arts Commission, the Maine Women Writers Collection, the Oregon Arts Commission, the Eleanor Humes Haney Fund, the Arch and Bruce Brown Foundation, the Open Meadows Foundation, and the Oregon Institute of Literary Arts. In 2005, she received the Lynda Hart Memorial Grant from the Astraea Foundation. She has been named national winner of the Nancy Dean Distinguished Playwriting Award, given annually at the Sisters on Stage Lesbian Theatre Conference in New York.
In 2002, she received the Janine C. Rae Cultural Award for the Advancement of Women's Culture from the National Women's Music Festival. Former recipients include Audre Lorde, June Jordan, Margarethe Cammermeyer, Nikki Giovanni, Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon.
Most recently, Gage's tours have included the Stonewall Center at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, the University of Colorado in Boulder, Gettysburg College, the University of Connecticut at both Stamford and Storrs, the University of Oregon at Eugene, the University of New England, SUNY Geneseo, Hollins University, the University of Virginia, the National Women's Music Festival, the National Women's Studies Association Conference, the University of Nebraska, Kansas State University, Chatham College in Pittsburgh, the United Kingdom Women's Studies Conference in Belfast, Northern Ireland, Women's Week at Provincetown, and the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival, where she was invited to teach an intensive workshop.
The founder and director of three theatre companies, she is currently the artistic director of Cauldron & Labrys, an all-women theatre in Portland, Maine.
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