Washington College is, in part, known for it's writing program. We have regular visits by well known writers -- everyone from Edward Albee and Israel Horovitz to Toni Morrison and John Barth in recent years. I can honestly say I have never seen students so enthusiastic about a guest. Another thing that is unusual and impressive is that she has kept in touch with several of our students since her visit.
One of the things I was most impressed with was the clarity of her aesthetics and politics. This is a person who does not apologize for her agenda or the militancy necessary to further that agenda. The amazing thing is she combines that unswerving commitment with compassion, understanding, warmth, and generosity.
She is totally committed to her art in a way that is truly inspiring. Don't let the lesbian/feminist moniker scare you, this is a formidable artist in every way."
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"I was more deeply moved and 'sinspired' by Carolyn Gage's new book than by anything else I've read in years. Like There's No Tomorrow has qualities rarely seen in current "theory." It is a work of burning, uncompromising vision and daring... a beacon of hope in these chilling times of compromise, timidity and apparent defeat. This book is Pure Fire. It is true and therefore extreme... a stunning manifestation of Radical Lesbian Feminist Courage and Genius." --- Mary Daly, Radical Feminist Philosopher and author of PureLust, Gyn/Ecology, and Outercourse
"Many feminists are brilliant, but how many are wise? Playwright Carolyn Gage is a radical lesbian feminist who is wise, as this book demonstrates... uncompromising and tough-minded, yet inspiring..." --- off our backs, Washington, DC.
"I've had a copy of the manuscript for less than a month, and it is covered with underlined passages and post it notes. Already, I find myself referring to it constantly, incorporating it into what I need to know about the world."--- Elliot, Women's Books Online
"I am replete or content. I feel as if I have had a most satisfying feast. I have been reading this book off and on for about two weeks, and although I am a quick reader, this is a book to have by your bedside or your favorite chair to think on as you read passages as needed." --- Mary Atkins, Uppity Women Magazine
Like There's No Tomorrow takes no prisoners. This is a meditation book that will clear your political sinuses and blow out the cobwebs of fuzzy "live-and-let-live" thinking. These annotated quotations may be read as a series of mini-lectures, as inspirational meditations, or as a Cook's tour of women's history.
Hot role models! Sor Ines de la Cruz, Chrystos, Sappho, Saadawi --- and a host of unsung heroines!
Cool strategy! How to lay in for a siege, turn the tables, seize the offensive.
Suspenseful stories! Donaldina Cameron's daring rescue of prostituted Asian girls, Fannie Lou Hamer's courageous resistance to police brutality, Lillian Hellman's defiant stand at the McCarthy hearings.
Words of wisdom... quotations urging women to hold a grudge, cherish our anger, cultivate our rage, mind other people's business, and live Like There's No Tomorrow!
These meditations are written with a light touch, but a deep politic. For the woman who finds "one day at a time" a formula for despair---finally a meditation book for those in search of radical healing!
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"As Carolyn Gage is one of the best lesbian playwrights in America, the book is an intellectual banquet... the reader will get the education of a lifetime."--- Lambda Book Report, Los Angeles.
Nine Short Plays is a collection of the best of Gage's one-act plays from 1988 to 2007.
In these plays, Gage explores the impact of the dominant culture on intimate relationships, illustrating with dramatic intensity how interpersonal dynamics reflect political paradigms. For example, in Louisa May Incest, the author of Little Women is confronted by her alter ego Jo March for her decisions to force her spunky heroine to burn her writing, abandon her career, and marry an impoverished, unambitious older man.
One of Gage's strongest themes is internalized oppression. In Patricide, an incest survivor confronts her father in a telephone conversation. The real dialogue, however, is between her self-doubt and her need to assert her truth.
Another theme of the plays is the impact of colonization on the human spirit. The Pele Chant, a play about the daughter of Hawaii's Queen Liliuokalani, explores how the often hidden mechanism of spiritual colonization can be the "Trojan horse" through which entire dominions are lost.
And, as always, the conflict between Gage's love for theatre and her critique of its historical misogyny is represented in the collection. Bite My Thumb is a satirical look at cross-dressing and gender-bending as practiced -- or not -- by a mainstream rep company and a women's theatre. Battered on Broadway examines the masochism and martyrdom embedded in female roles in the traditional Broadway musical. In Entr'acte, the war comes home in a play about a rape that occurred backstage during a Broadway run of a play that romanticized domestic violence. The victim, lesbian actress Eva Le Gallienne, is in a sanatorium, facing the crisis of her career -- a crisis that will lead to her founding of one of the most famous theatres in the world.
Gage describes her process in the introduction:
My "modus operandi" is to tell a story wherein the character's irresistible impulsion, usually toward some form of freedom, is checked by a seemingly immoveable force of society. If the characters have enough integrity and the situation enough authenticity, I find myself, at least for a while, wrestling with angels or demons. And then there is a break-through, a shift into another paradigm, where radical possibility abounds. This is why I write.
The anthology includes The Obligatory Scene, Bite My Thumb, Entr'acte or The Night Eva Le Gallienne Was Raped, The Pele Chant, Louisa May Incest, The Rules of the Playground, Patricide, Jane Addams and the Devil Baby, and Battered on Broadway.
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The Second Coming of Joan of Arc and Selected Plays [2009]
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This is a brand new collection of seven of Gage's best historical plays, including the award-winning title work, a play that has been performed around the world for more than two decades.
In Artemisia and Hildegard, Gage explores the tensions between assimilation and separatism in the explosive encounter on an academic arts panel between 17th century baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi and 12th century abbess Hildegard von Bingen. She revisits this theme in her widely-produced play, Harriet Tubman Visits a Therapist. Tubman, suspected of planning an escape, has been sent to the Therapist, another African-American woman, for an evaluation. Radical activism meets one-day-at-a-time therapism in this play that won the Off-Off Broadway Festival and was produced at the Louisville Juneteenth Festival.
The one-woman plays include The Last Reading of Charlotte Cushman, a full-length play about the l9th century performer whose lesbian affairs were a dramatic as her cross-dressed roles on the stage. The Parmachene Belle is a one-woman show about Cornelia Crosby, a 19th century Maine hunting guide with a crush on Annie Oakley, who was a survivor of torture and child sexual abuse. This is a play about outcasts, misfits, and survivors --- Crosby, Oakley, and Sitting Bull --- who all struggled to invent ways to continue in the face of shattered dreams and hopeless prospects.
The other plays include Calamity Jane Sends a Message to Her Daughter and Cookin' with Typhoid Mary.
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Sermons for a Lesbian Tent Revival
"The Lesbian Tent Revival --- inspiring, encouraging, truth-telling, amazing, comedic, must-reading for all Radical Feminists. I never had so much fun as at the Tent Revivals at Michigan, being in a crowd of like-minded, laughing, singing, applauding and shouting-out with Sister Carolyn. She's pure genius. Buy This Book. You won't be sorry." ---Susan Wiseheart.
"Sisters! I hath been SAVED!"-- Callie
"The LTR rocked my world! In August at the MWMF my Aussie mates agreed that The LTR was our highlite and we left wanting more - much more...Sister Carolyn has had a profound revelation - she understands that our lesbian feminist lives cannot grow in joy, health and wisdom without regular attendance at her Revival. I'm a believer and I'm excited to spread the Word. Like yeast in bread, without it our lives cannot rise and expand. A-(wo)men!"--- Georgina, Sydney, Australia
"Sisters, I have seen the light and felt the spark. Sister Carolyn's tent revivals have saved my soul from the hellfire of obfuscation." --Amy McLoughlin, Ann Arbor, MI
"YES! my feelings and thoughts are given voice..." Amy, Denver.
Thirteen sermons originally delivered at the Lesbian Tent Revival at the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival! Rousing, rowdy, rabble-rousing, radical-feminist, soul-saving inspirational sermons from Sister Carolyn of the Sisterhood of the Sacred Synapse! Bring the Lesbian Tent Revival into your home... get out the fans and be ready to testify! Blessed be!
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The Second Coming of Joan of Arc [CD of Gage's performance]
"... a tour de force performance by US writer/actor Carolyn Gage. Here the true story of Jeanne Romˇe, the young peasant girl who liberated France, is brought to us in a contemporary setting, to explore how 500 years later things have changed for women in society. It is a flawless performance, delivered with passion, indignation, some humour, connection, opinion and power... "-- Gay Community News, Ireland
"The night I saw Second Coming [of Joan of Arc], six years ago, I borrowed a copy of the play from a friend. Ever since then the book has lived in my book bag, purse, shoulder bag, carry on, reminding me that there are "two ways to destroy a woman," reminding me not to get ripped apart. Gage has... has given us a hero that doesn't run around in her underwear and taught us to take back the voices in our heads. Gage has changed so many lives she will never know about. and the only way I know how to thank her is to never stop fighting." -- Tamanya Garza, The University of the Sciences, Philadelphia.
Seventy-minute CD of Gage's electrifying live performance of her lesbian classic, The Second Coming of Joan of Arc. Recorded at the Institute for the Musical Arts, June Millington's legendary recording studio.
Joan of Arc led an army to victory at seventeen. At eighteen, she arranged the coronation of a king. At nineteen, she went up against the entire Catholic church... and lost. Her trial lasted five months, and the testimony by witnesses was carefully transcribed by notaries. Twenty years after her death, a new trial was authorized, and again detailed records were kept. There was testimony by her childhood playmates, by her parents, by the women who slept with her, by the soldiers who served under her, by the priests who confessed her, by those who witnessed and administered her torture. She is the most thoroughly documented figure of the fifteenth century. So why do the myths about the simpleminded peasant girl, the pious virgin, still pervade the history books?
Joan was anorectic. She was a teenage runaway. She had an incestuous, alcoholic father. She loved women. She died for her right to wear men's clothing. She was defiant, irreverent, more clever than her judges, unrepentant, and unfailingly true to her own visions.
In The Second Coming of Joan of Arc, Joan returns to share her story with contemporary women. She tells her experiences with the highest levels of church, state, and military, and unmasks the brutal misogyny behind male institutions.
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The Second Coming of Joan of Arc and Other Plays [1994]
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"... a whole women's theatre tradition in one volume... wonderful to read --- rich, original deeply affirming --- and must be phenomenal to see on stage. The culture of women wehave never had is invented in Carolyn Gage's brilliant and beautiful plays." --- Andrea Dworkin, feminist philosopher, activist, author.
"... the toughest, most lesbian/feminist-identified work for theatre I know... brilliant and daring scripts..." --- John Stoltenberg, Executive Editor, On theIssues.
"Carolyn Gage is a fabulous feminist playwright, and a major one too. This is great theatre. Gage's dramatic and lesbian imagination is utterly original... There is no rhetoric here: only one swift and pleasurable intake of breath after another... Women's mental health would improve, instantly, were they able to read and see these plays performed."---Phyllis Chesler, Author of Women and Madness.
This collection of seven of Gage's most popular one-acts was a national finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. The title work has been the subject of a National Public Radio feature, and a first-class production of the play ran for two years in Brazil.
The other plays in the collection include:
Louisa May Incest, Jane Addams and the Devil Baby, Mason-Dixon, Battered on Broadway, Calamity Jane Sends a Message to Her Daughter, and Cookin' with Typhoid Mary.
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"No playwright has created as amazing a pantheon of historical lesbian characters as Carolyn Gage. Her book, Monologues and Scenes for Lesbian Actors, provides a sumptuous feast of possibilities for both seasoned and budding lesbian performers to use portraying a full range of emotion and political perspectives. Carolyn Gage is a national lesbian treasure."-- Rosemary Keefe Curb, editor of Amazon All Stars: 13 Lesbian Plays
"Her dozens of strong, funny, determined characters are a gift to lesbian actors everywhere... She also has a wicked sense of humor... "--- Bay Area Reporter, San Francisco
"... remarkable strength and universality... moving and courageous... the collection will appeal to a readership beyond lesbian actors, because through careful research and deliberation Gage has created many stories of women's lives. In her writing, she makes one face truths one might normally try to avoid."---Lambda Book Report, Washington, DC.
"Gage's imagination and her richness of dialogue are a wonderful offering to a theatre community that could certainly use a push in the direction of representing us all on the stage."--- On the Purple Circuit, Los Angeles.
"Strong contributions such as Gage's should indeed help alleviate the long-standing situation of lesbians having to learn the craft of acting by impersonating heterosexuals... recommended for libraries supporting drama programs(schools as well as academic) and public libraries in towns and cities with community theatre."--- Broadside: Newsletter of the Theatre Library Association, NYC.
"... a diversity of roles to stimulate the most adventurous lesbian performer... this text enables the reader to see the impressive range of her work as well as to supply a needed sourcebook for auditions and scene work in one volume."--- The Lesbian Review of Books.
Finally! A book for lesbians who are tired of "passing" at auditions and in acting classes andworkshops! Here at last, from one of the most talented and inventive contemporary playwrights,is a book of twenty-five monologues and forty-five scenes by, for, and about lesbians. Here are dramatic portrayals of our coming-out stories, our strategies of resistance, our rescue ofsurvivors of sexual abuse, our passions, our torture, our triumphs. The settings are historic and contemporary, ranging from the goddess temples of Lesbos to the locker rooms of a softball team.
This book may be ordered as a download or hard copy at
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Wanna read some Excerpts?
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Excerpts from Scenes and Monologues for Lesbian Actors
From UGLY DUCKLINGS by Carolyn Gage
Renee: The arts-and-crafts counselor, 19, a working-class stone butch.
The Setting: The lakeside dock in front of the canoe shack at Camp Fernlake, a private girls' camp in Maine.
Renee is gathering her gear together for leaving the camp. Angie, another 19-year old counselor,has asked Renee about her meeting with the camp director, Charlotte. Angie is in love with Renee, but she has not been able to admit it to herself. Renee is aware of this and resents it.
Well, I went up to my cabin, and I met with Charlotte, and she asked me to step into her office, and I did. And she tells me to sit down, and she closes the door, and she comes around and sits behind her desk. Like it's a fucking movie or something. And she puts her hands together like this, and she leans forward, and she gives me that Christ-on-the-cross look of hers, and she says, "Renee, I have heard something about you that concerns me very much." And I smile back and say, "Oh?" And she gets a little nervous now, because I was supposed to flinch, and she pulls back and puts her hands in her lap. She's looking out the window now. And she says, "Renee, I have been told that you are a homosexual." And I sit there smiling at her, you know, still waiting to hear what it is that concerns her. And this really throws the old bitch. Her face kind of twitches and she says, "Do you have anything to say about that?" And I said, "Well, yes. I really resent anyone using that word to refer to me." She looks a little more relaxed, and she starts to say something, but I cut her off. I say, "I prefer to be called a lesbian." Well, old Charlotte just about dropped her teeth on that one. She gets all flustered, and she walks over to the window and her hands are just going a mile a minute. So I say, "Well, if that's all - I have to get back down to the waterfront. Angie and I are leaving for an overnight camping trip." And I'm at the door. Well, she really springs into action now. She says, "Renee!" and I say "Yes?" and she says, "Would you sit down please. I'm afraid we're going to need to discuss this." And then of course it's the song and dance about personal lives being kept personal, but once they become public then it becomes her business to guard the reputation of the camp. The usual hypocritical double-standard bullshit. And I just sit there. And she starts to get a little angry, like I should be agreeing with her that I'm a pervert. And she tells me I should know that it's not something people want to know about. And so I ask her why. And she says because they find it disgusting. So I say, "Why is it disgusting for one woman to love another, to want to hold her in her arms all night, to want to touch her the way only another woman can...?" And Charlotte interrupts me. She's got her checkbook out. She tells me she's going to give me the rest of my salary, and enough money to pay for the trip back to Boston. She tells me I will have to leave tonight. She holds out the check and says she doesn't have to do this, but she wants to, just as she knows I will not want to leave in a fashion that will upset the camp. So I ask her, "Is this hush money?" And she says, "This is money in recognition of your concern for the welfare of the girls at Fernlake. Many of them might never get to go to camp again over a thing like this. They may never see the friends they met at camp again." And we look at each other. And then I take the money. That's what happened.
Excerpt from BABE by Carolyn Gage
Mama: Babe's mother, a woman who emigrated from Norway to south Texas in order to bewith her husband.
Babe Didrikson: The world's greatest athlete, a 17-year old butch lesbian.
The Setting: Babe and her sister's bedroom, Beaumont, Texas, 1930.
Mama insists that Babe accompany her sister to the high school dance, wearing the dress shehas sewn for her.
MAMA:Now, what is this about you not being able to go? (BABE doesn't say anything.) I want to know. You can tell your mother. (She puts her arm around BABE, and rearranges a strayhair.)
BABE: Well... I got on the football team today. (She pauses for the effect. MAMA doesn't flinch.) Coach said I could try out, so I did. That Raymond Alford's the place kicker, and I knew I could kick the pants off him...
MAMA: Mildred.
BABE: Anyway...I tried out and I kicked five outta five field goals. You should have seen me... one right after the other!And right down the middle, too. Everybody was just starin' at me. Coach's eyes was fallin' right outta his head. He said he'd never seen nothin' like it in all his years at Beaumont. He said I could ---
MAMA: I don't see what this has to do with your going to the dance tonight.
BABE:Well, all the guys were starin' at me, and I guess it made 'em kinda sore, 'cause none of them could kick half that good if their life depended on it, and their girlfriends were watchin' the practice, and it made them kinda sore too, 'cause they donÕt ever get to do anything better than the guys ---
MAMA: What does this have to do with the dance?
BABE: They're all gonna laugh at me if I go tonight.
MAMA: Why would they do that?
BABE:(Angry) Because I'm different, Mama! I don't look good in sissy clothes, an' I don't know how to dance with some guy haulin' me around, and I don't wanna stand around in the bathroom and talk about my hair. I'm not like the other girls. I'm not like Lillie.
MAMA: (Cold) Do you think there's something wrong with your sister?
BABE: I didn't say that.
MAMA: Well, it certainly sounded like it to me. (BABE looks away.) Mildred, you are not different. You are a lovely young woman, and you have a good sense of humor, and you're fun to be with. There is no reason for you not to be popular with the girls and the boys. The only thing wrong with you is that you think you're different, and so you go out of your way trying to prove it to everybody. I know. When your papa brought me over from Norway, I felt like it was the end of the world. I cried to myself all the time. I thought, "I will never learn to get used to it here." I couldn't talk right, and I didn't know anybody, and I didn't have my family here. I thought everybody was laughing at me all the time, because I was different. I know. But you learn. People are not so different. You start saying to yourself, "I'm just like these girls," and soon everybody will like you.
