Plays in a Time of Resistance
An Anthology of Plays by Carolyn Gage
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These six plays were written in the years between 2020 and 2026, years of a global pandemic followed by an unprecedented national, political crisis, which continues to escalate. The plays reflect my engagement with the impact of these events on our personal and collective lives, refracted through a historical lens. Vital and urgent.
Starpattern
A play about two extraordinarily courageous young women who survived the 1966 mass shooting at the University of Texas at Austin. Claire Wilson, one of the first victims, lay wounded on the South Mall, unable to be rescued while the sniper was still active. Rita Starpattern ran out, at tremendous risk, lay down next to her, and engaged her in a conversation that kept her conscious and alive for over an hour. Stunning play about lesbian courage.
St. Frances and the Fallen Angels
This is a play about Frances Perkins, the Secretary of Labor under FDR, and her superhuman achievement of the Social Security Act of 1935. It is a story about two women in love, about the ghosts of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, and a true Christmas miracle.
Reef Point
The lady's maid of celebrated landscape designer Beatrix Farrand wrestles with Farrand's decision in 1955 to tear down her estate in Bar Harbor, and with it, the gardens that have been her lifework. A play about making enormous changes very late in life--about gardens lost and gardens found.
Restell
With a large and colorful Dickensian cast and exploding with New York’s Gilded Age, Restell is a full-length play that tells the tale of 19th-century abortionist and her daring escape from anti-vice crusader Anthony Comstock. "Strong craft and old-school playwrighting, very engaging and good pace. Feels like classic theater in the best way."-- Seattle Public Theatre .
The Family Reunion
At the "Thirteen-Millionth Annual Great Apes Family Reunion," the gorilla matriarch has organized a separate picnic for the great ape females, in order to call out the enabling of human males in the destruction of the planet. A blistering social satire that makes the connection between violence against women and the devastation of the planet.
Grace at the Claremont
In 1888, Susan Gilbert Dickinson, following the death of her sister-in-law and intimate friend, the poet Emily Dickinson, travels to a fishing village in Maine for a vacation. She brings along her two adult children. As her daughter struggles with the drama within an alcoholic family, she learns a life-saving lesson from the ship captain's wife who owns the Claremont Hotel.
Starpattern
A play about two extraordinarily courageous young women who survived the 1966 mass shooting at the University of Texas at Austin. Claire Wilson, one of the first victims, lay wounded on the South Mall, unable to be rescued while the sniper was still active. Rita Starpattern ran out, at tremendous risk, lay down next to her, and engaged her in a conversation that kept her conscious and alive for over an hour. Stunning play about lesbian courage.
St. Frances and the Fallen Angels
This is a play about Frances Perkins, the Secretary of Labor under FDR, and her superhuman achievement of the Social Security Act of 1935. It is a story about two women in love, about the ghosts of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, and a true Christmas miracle.
Reef Point
The lady's maid of celebrated landscape designer Beatrix Farrand wrestles with Farrand's decision in 1955 to tear down her estate in Bar Harbor, and with it, the gardens that have been her lifework. A play about making enormous changes very late in life--about gardens lost and gardens found.
Restell
With a large and colorful Dickensian cast and exploding with New York’s Gilded Age, Restell is a full-length play that tells the tale of 19th-century abortionist and her daring escape from anti-vice crusader Anthony Comstock. "Strong craft and old-school playwrighting, very engaging and good pace. Feels like classic theater in the best way."-- Seattle Public Theatre .
The Family Reunion
At the "Thirteen-Millionth Annual Great Apes Family Reunion," the gorilla matriarch has organized a separate picnic for the great ape females, in order to call out the enabling of human males in the destruction of the planet. A blistering social satire that makes the connection between violence against women and the devastation of the planet.
Grace at the Claremont
In 1888, Susan Gilbert Dickinson, following the death of her sister-in-law and intimate friend, the poet Emily Dickinson, travels to a fishing village in Maine for a vacation. She brings along her two adult children. As her daughter struggles with the drama within an alcoholic family, she learns a life-saving lesson from the ship captain's wife who owns the Claremont Hotel.