• 2007, Featured at Dublin International Gay Theatre Festival, Ireland.
• 2007, Featured at Harvest Festival, Village Scene Theatre, Montreal.
• 2007, Excerpts produced by the Malta Council for Culture and the Arts with the Embassy of Malta in Berlin, for the European Union Festival.
• Featured interview for "To the Best of Our Knowledge," National Public Radio.
• First-class production in Sao Paolo and Rio de Janiero, Brazil, featuring Christiane Torloni (Portuguese language translation). Top box office for season, toured BRazil.
• Featured in Girlfriends Magazine, San Francisco.
• Featured performance, Gay/Lesbian Pre-Conference for Association of Theatre in Higher Education Conference, Washington, DC.
• Featured performer at U.K. Women's Studies Conference, Belfast, Northern Ireland.
• Invited to perform at the World Summit for Economic Sustainability, Johannesburg.
• National Finalist, Lambda Literary Awards in Drama (The Second Coming of Joan of Arc and Other Plays, HerBooks, Santa Cruz, CA).
• Oregon Playwrights Award, Oregon Institute of Literary Arts.
• Featured on the cover of national feminist magazine, On the Issues.
• Reviewed in Lesbian Review of Books and Feminist Bookstore News.
• Performed in New York, Atlanta, Minneapolis, Madison, San Francisco, Portland, Los Angeles, Toronto, Philadelphia, Salt Lake City, Boston, Chicago, Denver.
• West Coast Womyn's Music Festival, East Coast Lesbian Festival, National Lesbian Conference, Women's Ordination Conference, National Women's Studies Conference, National Women's Music Festival, Women's Week in Provincetown, MA.
• Performed at University of Oregon at Eugene, University of Virginia, University of New England, University of Connecticut at Storrs and Stamford, University of Colorado at Boulder, University of Utah, University of Nebraska at Lincoln, Hollins University, Gettysburg College, Colorado College, Bloomsberg University, St. Cloud University, SUNY Cortland, University of Southern Kansas, Kalamazoo College, Wells College.
• Audio recording distributed by Ladyslipper Music.
• Written up in The Washington Blade, Washington, D.C. and Windy City Times, Chicago.

Phyllis Chesler, author of Women and Madness:

"... unparalleled, far superior to George Bernard Shaw's . . . . The Second Coming of Joan of Arc is high art and revolutionary theatre combined."

Z. Budapest, author of The Grandmother of Time:

"Joan of Arc has never been made more real to me, not in the movies, not on stage. This is the woman, not the myth . . . Brava!"

From the Flames, Nottingham, England:

". . . passion, humor, rage, insight, regret . . . . This play works on many levels - layers and layers and layers . . . a highly intelligent piece of work which always remains accessible . . . an emotional, moving, exciting experience. . . . "

Feminist Bookstore News, San Francisco:

. . passionate, witty. Let this Joan be one of your voices."

We the People, Santa Rosa, CA:

"Carolyn Gage is a powerful writer who comprehends her character . . . exhilarating . . . held my attention fully.

Women's Voices, Santa Rosa, CA:

". . . wickedly funny and devastatingly on target. . . . "

The Spectrum, Buffalo, NY:

". . . a girl-power epic . . . Gage is at her best here, as almost every line is scorchingly insightful."

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 anoretic. She was a teenage runaway. She had an incestuous, alcoholic father. She slept with 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.

Vita Sackville-West, lesbian writer and lover of Virginia Woolf, was one of the first to write a biography of Joan based on the complete translations of the trial transcripts. Her book is an attempt to uncover the truth about Joan and to reclaim her from the distortions and trivializations of male historians. In writing The Second Coming of Joan of Arc, Carolyn Gage has used Sackville-West's biography as the source of her information and inspiration.

One woman
75 minutes
Single set

Extravagant Love is the story of Parisian writer Violette LeDuc.

Using narrative excerpts from LeDuc's works, the play tells a passionate story of a lesbian struggling with her disturbing memories of a narcissistic, incestuous mother whom she both adored and hated. Against a backdrop of Parisian fashion salons, decadent hotels, and garish street carnivals, LeDuc unfolds her story of her search for female autonomy.

In the first act, LeDuc reenacts her obsession with Parisian high fashion - an obsession complicated by her strong identification with the male gender. She relives an episode of shoplifting, as well as the horrifying betrayal of her lesbian lover by an act of prostitution.

In the second act, LeDuc takes us back to her first lesbian experience in a girls' dormitory of a Parisian boarding school. This scene was fictionalized in her lesbian erotic novel, Therese and Isabelle, and in the '60's became the basis of an erotic film of the same name.

LeDuc narrates in dramatic tableaux the events surrounding her illegal abortion, and in doing so, she uncovers the primal trauma behind her gender confusion and misogyny: child sexual abuse at the hands of her mother.

Breaking the silence about one of society's deepest taboos, Extravagant Love takes its audiences on an unforgettable odyssey into a lesbian world of passionate tenderness and devastating betrayal.

Production rights must be negotiated individually with the agent for the author's estate.

One woman
One hour
Single set

• 2007, Stage Q, Madison, WI (reading).
• Title play for Amazon All Stars: Thirteen Lesbian Plays (edited by Rosemary Keefe Curb, Applause Books, NYC), named National Finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in drama.
• Musical highlights showcased at Sisters on Stage Lesbian Theatre Conference, NYC.
• First lesbian musical to be licensed by a mainstream play publisher!

Santa Cruz Sentinel, CA:

". . . rollicking, fun piece that does touch on some serious issues . . . The audience was in stitches for most of the play and the rafters rang with applause."

Lee Lynch, lesbian author and nationally syndicated columnist:

". . . delightful foot-tapping, arm-in-arm down the streets, sing-at-the-top-of-your-lungs stuff . . . The Amazon All-Stars is ours. It's good, it's fun . . . Lesbians need to see this show, to laugh and cry with it, to love it . . . . "

We the People, Santa Rosa, CA:

"sexy, raucous . . . a real crowd-pleaser. . . . "

The Lithiagraph, Ashland, OR:

"This is a sparkling, funny play . . . . "

Women's Voices, Santa Rosa, CA:

". . . a great show . . . . "

Lambda Book Report

". . . delightfully funny and sweet musical... With enlightening musical numbers by Sue Carney and humor abounding, [we] are drawn into the lives of these women as players and as people."

The Amazon All-Stars is a zany musical comedy about a women's softball team. Kelly, the left fielder, is truly "out in left field," preferring her fantasies to reality. This makes for some great lesbian-style Walter Mitty scenes. When Jan, the new short stop, decides to test her sexual prowess with Kelly, both women are brought to a crisis about the way they see themselves and the world. Amid various subplots and subterfuges, team spirit triumphs, and everybody's a winner. Who could resist "Come Out for the Team," "When Women Do It to Each Other," or "Ya Gotta Get Under the Glove"?

THE AMAZON ALL-STARS is written in the genre of the "naive musical" of the 1930's, but it's anything but simple! The nine members of the team are all fully developed with distinct personalities and motivations. Also, there are three subplots, all presenting aspects of denial in lesbian community and relationships: sorority politics in collectives, alcohol abuse, infidelity, and the mistaking of sex for intimacy.

The primary relationship (Jan and Kelly) is shallow on the surface, dealing with two ingenues, but it touches on the deeper issue of exploitation of women who suffer syndromes from child sexual abuse. The secondary relationship is between an older couple with an eight-year history. This relationship mirrors Jan and Kelly's dilemma, but with more depth, adding resonance to the central plot.

The lesbian empowerment fantasies encompass several areas of our oppression and invisibility: sports, popular music, TV and film, and families of birth. And the use of the Leather Woman provides a "picture frame" device for the show, enhancing the theatricality of the work and allowing women's communities to showcase a local band.

The three ball players who "triple up" for additional fantasy chorus roles, have parts written for them which allow them to play their own alter-egos in the fantasy numbers. For example, Ursula, the high school player, is the teenage bass player in the nightmare sequence. Later, in the suicide fantasy, she is Mary Richland, a former high school friend who betrayed Kelly and turned straight. The audience experiences a consistency of character through these sequences, which adds coherence to the plot and helps anchor the fantasy scenes in the realities of the ball players.

The numbers are all highly recognizable parodies of specific types of popular music: the sleazy Stones rock-and-roll number, the fifties ballad, the Chris Williamson take-off. The lyrics for the parodies, ranging from simplistic to idiotic, are in keeping with the genre being parodied. In other instances, they are sophisticatedly cynical ("When Women Do It to Each Other") or represent the multi-layered psychology of the character ("Pour Me" or "She Doesn't Even See Me.")

THE AMAZON ALL-STARS takes a lightweight tradition and sets dramatic precedent with a thoughtful and multidimensional treatment of lesbian community.

Twelve women
Two hours
Three sets

• Staged reading, Music in a Box, Dramatists Guild, NYC.
• First Place, Musical Theatre, Seattle New Plays Buffet, juried by Civic Light Opera.
• National Finalist, Aggie Players Playwriting Competition, Texas A & M University.

LEADING LADIES is a sparkling all-women cabaret musical incorporating seven separate historical vignettes onto a single set, a backstage dressing room.

At the opening of the play, Mary, a young actor tortured by doubts about her ability, debates whether or not she should abandon her career in "The Voice of My Critics." The dressing room comes alive with ghosts of famous women actors, and one by one they reenact critical moments in their own careers, when they had to confront fear and doubt:

SARAH SIDDONS, fired from Drury Lane, realizes her meteoric rise to fame was only the payoff for David Garrick's sexual exploitation of her. She resolves to play the provinces until she can make it back to London by herself. She belts out "When the Show Is Over," the strip song to end all strip songs.

CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN, laughed off the stage for being fat, determines not to give in to humiliation with her inspirational "Audience of One."

ELEANORA DUSE, pregnant and abandoned by her lover at the time of her big theatre break, pulls herself together so the show can go on. The Stage Manager joins her for a theatrical soft-shoe duet, "Improvise!"

SARAH BERNHARDT, rejected by French audiences who have not forgiven her for deserting the national theatre, turns the tables on Bastille Day at the Paris Opera. Thumbing her nose at traditional proprieties, she sings, "I Know What Pleases the People," a song which gives her the opportunity to reprise a half dozen of her best on-stage dying effects.

MINNIE FISKE, the longest holdout against the notorious Syndicate, rallies her troupe to give up their New York run when she learns that the theatre where they are playing is "all sold out." Her loyal company joins her in the gospel stomp, "All Sold Out" - but not before their rambunctious rendition in three-part Sweet-Adeline harmony of "An Actress Needs a Home."

LAURETTE TAYLOR, after fifteen years without work, overcomes the stigma of alcoholism to stage a risky comeback in an unknown vehicle - The Glass Menagerie. Putting on "a little more rouge to hide all the blue," she sings a compelling torch song to "The Old Ingenue."

Finally, Mary is rejoined by her company for the moment when she must make up her mind. Thanks to the example of a seventy-year-old ELLEN TERRY, who defied the World War I bombings to perform the role of Portia, Mary makes the decision to stay, and the whole company joins her for a rousing finale: "Every Night Is Opening Night."

A note about the music: The fourteen musical numbers run the gamut from bump-and-grind to gospel stomp, from three-part harmonies to piano bar blues. Cabaret numbers with the emphasis on entertainment.

Seven women
Two hours
Single set

• Excerpted in More Monologues for Women, By Women, ed. by Tori Haring-Smith, Heinemann, Portsmouth, NH, 1996.
• Winner, Walden Writers Fellowship, Lewis and Clark College, OR.

This is a major new musical and a milestone in musical theatre. It's a play about women athletes, about world class competition, about mothers and sisters, and about a woman who broke all the rules to become the greatest woman athlete of the twentieth century - Babe Didriksen.

The play traces Babe's career from high school basketball star, to Olympic Gold Medalist in track, to first woman on the professional golf circuit. Her struggles for athletic achievement parallel her personal struggles for recognition and acceptance by her mother and sister. Babe's lesbianism emerges against a backdrop of feminine stereotypes and heterosexual constraints.

This musical celebrates the woman athlete at the same time it explores the darker themes of how women sabotage each other, passing on poisonous conditioning from one generation to another.

The show is a big, brassy, full-cast mainstage musical, featuring a high school gymnasium dance and beauty pageant, a choreographed jazz interpretation of a women's basketball game, a pajama party on the Olympic train, and a Texas swing number at the driving range. Numbers include "Let the Boys Lead the Dance," "Raise the Bar!," "Fast Break," "Par for the Course," and Babe's theme song, "Winning Makes Up for It All."

Eight women, eight men
Men and women's choruses
Two hours
Multiple sets

WOMEN ON THE LAND contrasts the world of the Los Angeles film studio with the rural environment of a lesbian land collective in southern Oregon, and points up the choices lesbian artists are forced to make between selling our art and protecting our vision. The show also provides a retrospective of lesbian culture in the early 70's, with the attendant witch hunts and "political correctness" wars.

Stevie, who produces lesbian erotic videos in Los Angeles, finds that her actor-lover, Damian, is becoming impatient to make a "real" lesbian film. Dialogue breaks down over the question of money for the project, and just then Catherine, Stevie's old lover from fifteen years ago shows up on the scene. Catherine lives at Herland, a lesbian land collective she and Stevie founded in the 70's. Damian, determined to find the women who don't care about money, accompanies Catherine back to Herland. Stevie pursues her, and is in turn pursued by a leather porno star bucking for the role of lesbian vampire in the next film.

The second act opens at Herland, in the middle of a severe drought. Tempers flair and cultural and ideological sparks fly as the Los Angeles leather scene invades the kingdom of Oregon country dykes. Magic is abroad on the night of Beltane, and the women discover in themselves the common lesbian values that have been lost in both worlds.

This musical has something for everyone: The opening rock video number from the infamous "Lesbian Vampires From Hell," the sexual auction at the notorious Ladyfingers Bar, the potluck-western dance "Country Dish," and playful "Denim and Flannel Rag."

Six women, one twelve-year old girl
Chorus of women
Two hours
Multiple sets

This musical adaptation of Antoine de Saint Exupery's classic tale differs radically from previous adaptations, which have been elaborate and spectacular - and unsuccessful. This adaptation, designed for black-box production, focuses on the heart of the story, instead of its exoticism, rendering the material both more coherent and more accessible to children.

In this adaptation, the focus is on the child's relationships to parental figures. The primary dynamic is the developing relationship between the grounded Aviator and the wandering Prince, the father-son matrix. To sustain this focus, the Aviator performs the multiple roles of the characters from the other planets - for they represent the modes of adult thinking which separate the boy from the man. The woman who plays the Flower also doubles as the Fox, because, although the Prince's emotional dilemma of separation is with the Flower, he resolves his questions about intimacy through working with the Fox.

The three-person cast, the shorter length of the play, and the simplicity of sets break with the conventional treatment of THE LITTLE PRINCE, and provide a show deeply relevant to children, resonant to adults, and filled with heart. The eight songs include "One Cup of Water," "A Very Small Star," and "No One Can Touch Me."

Production rights must be negotiated individually with the agent for the author's estate.

One woman, one man, one child (either sex)
90 minutes
Single set