Ugly Ducklings
Paperback
eBook (EPUB)
eBook (PDF)
Kindle
Youtube trailer of documentary about the play
Ugly Ducklings Campaign
Ugly Ducklings Workshop with Gage
Set design for Colby College production
Paperback
eBook (EPUB)
eBook (PDF)
Kindle
Youtube trailer of documentary about the play
Ugly Ducklings Campaign
Ugly Ducklings Workshop with Gage
Set design for Colby College production
- 2022, excerpted monologue performed by Some1Speaking. (Zoom reading)
- 2020, Western Washington University, Not So Staged Readings. (Zoom reading).
- Nominated by the American Theatre Critics Association for their Steinberg/ATCA New Play Award. (Best New Play of the Year Outside NYC)
- National Lesbian Theatre Award, Curve Magazine, San Francisco.
- Published in The Triple Goddess: Three Plays, Gage Press.
- Honorable Mention, “Best New Play in Metro DC,” Metro Weekly Review, Washington, DC.
- $150,000 documentary, Ugly Ducklings: The Documentary produced and premiered at the Frameline International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival in San Francisco
- Stage Q, Madison, WI.
- Hardy Girls Healthy Women production at Colby College, Waterville, ME. (toured to Camden, ME.)
- Venus Theatre, Washington, DC.
- University of Maine at Machias (staged reading)
- University of West Virginia, Morgantown (reading).
- Published in At Play: An Anthology of Maine Drama, Levant Heritage Library, Levant, ME.
- Made in Maine, Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance (reading), Bangor.
- Workshop production, Bates College, Lewiston, Maine.
- Second Place, Celebration Theatre’s New Play Competition, LA.
Ugly Ducklings examines the unhealthy turns that relationships between girls can take when they are not allowed their natural expression. The so-called “Ophelia Syndrome” comes alive as the cabin of younger girls, their self-esteem still reinforced by the primacy of their relationships, comes into contact with the older girls who have begun to turn against themselves and each other in their attempts to conform to the pressures of compulsory heterosexuality.
Angie, a middle-class college student, is falling in love with another counselor at the camp, Renée, who is a working-class “out” lesbian. Against this backdrop of intense homophobia, the young women struggle with their feelings for each other and the problems of defining themselves in a society that insists they be invisible. The camp legend about a monster in the lake parallels the adult phobias about lesbianism, and, confronted with an attempted child suicide, campers and counselors are compelled to face their worst fears in the microcosmic world of the summer camp.
Ugly Ducklings breaks ranks with male-centered queer drama in foregrounding the experience of women and girls who are survivors of sexual violence and shattering romantic and sentimental conventions about the “gentle sex.”
Nine girls, five women
Two hours
Single set
Reviews:
“If it is possible that a piece of theatre can be both gritty and sublime at the same time, then Venus Theatre has achieved it in their world premiere production of Carolyn Gage’s Ugly Ducklings." Metro Weekly Review, Washington, DC.
“… deserves a central place in the lesbian feminist literary canon...” --off our backs, Washington, DC.
“… refreshingly well told tale that while raising all the issues that this anti-homophobic company and playwright want to raise, does so with an admirable restraint, avoiding the obvious traps of sensationalism and titillation and striking an admirable balance of theatricality and realism.” --Potomac Stages, Washington, DC.
“… a play about coming of age and homophobia and how people deal with emerging understandings about sexuality. It’s a tough, tough, tough topic, and it’s handled here with a great deal of raw energy, but also with a great deal of subtlety… a very, very nice piece… definitely worth seeing.” --Peter Fay for WAMU (NPR affiliate station), Washington, DC.
“Radically redefining beauty… Ugly Ducklings reveals how notions of homosexuality can shatter the souls of girls and women… an impressive work… a brutally honest examination of what it means to be a young lesbian...” --The Washington Blade, Washington, DC.
“Funny, poignant, unpredictable… very well-written. Educational without being preachy. Engaging. Absorbing. Sweet.” --Mariah Burton-Nelson, Athlete, Speaker, Author of Are We Winning Yet?
“… like the best drama, Gage’s play is filled to bursting with sharp-edged double meaning and irony… accessible and engaging format, with the social consciousness of Ibsen and Shaw...” —Assunta Kent, Phd., from introduction to At Play: An Anthology of Maine Drama.
"It's emotionally charged, unrelenting, and smart, smart, smart."—Kate Bornstein, author and activist.