Carolyn Gage

Last updated
Carolyn Gage
Gage for wikipedia.jpg
Born1952 (age 7071)
United States of America
OccupationPlaywright, Actress, Theatre Director
LanguageEnglish
NationalityAmerican
PeriodContemporary
GenreDrama, historical drama, one-woman-shows
Literary movementRevival of lesbian feminist history and legacy
Website
carolyngage.weebly.com

Carolyn Gage (born 1952) is an American playwright, [1] actor, theatrical director and author. She has written nine books on lesbian theater and sixty-five plays, musicals, and one-woman shows. A lesbian feminist, [2] her work emphasizes non-traditional roles for women and lesbian characters.

Contents

Early life

Gage earned a master's degree in theater arts from Portland State University. [3]

Career

Gage's best known work is The Second Coming of Joan of Arc, a one-woman play about the historical figure Joan of Arc. [4] It has been translated into Portuguese, French, Italian, Bulgarian, and Mandarin and achieved first-class production in Brazil, starring Christiane Torloni. The script was published in The Second Coming of Joan of Arc and Selected Plays, an anthology of Gage's historical plays. The anthology was named the national winner of the 2008 Lambda Literary Award in Drama. [5]

Other notable work includes Ugly Ducklings, which 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 $150,000 documentary on the play premiered in 2005 at the Frameline International Film Festival in San Francisco. [ citation needed ] In 2004, 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. [ citation needed ]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.

In addition to creative works, Gage has published a manual on lesbian theater production, Take Stage! How to Direct and Produce a Lesbian Play, which was published by Scarecrow Press. Gage also wrote Monologues and Scenes for Lesbian Actors.

The author of numerous feminist essays, Gage was named contributing editor to the national feminist quarterly On The Issues and has published in the journals Trivia, Sinister Wisdom , Lesbian Ethics, and off our backs , as well as The Lesbian Review of Books, The Gay and Lesbian Review, and Lambda Book Report. Other publications include The Michigan Quarterly Review and Dramatists Guild Quarterly.

Gage served as a guest lecturer at Bates College from 1998 to 1999. [3]

The University of Oregon archive acquired her personal papers in 2004. [6]

In December 2014, Gage was awarded the first Lifetime Achievement Award given by Venus Theatre, founded by Deborah Randall in Laurel, Maryland. During the ceremony also celebrating the theatre's 50th production, she revived the memories of actresses, playwrights and directors Eva Le Gallienne, Henrietta Vinton Davis and Minnie Maddern Fiske who faced tremendous opposition to their work from the cultural establishment of their time. The American activist and playwright John Stoltenberg, lifelong companion of radical feminist Andrea Dworkin, said about Gage's acceptance speech:

Her acceptance speech, which she spoke off-the-cuff from notes, had a profound effect on the audience, because in it she described real and raw truths about what it means to work in theater as a woman. [7]

In 2018, Gage was interviewed for an investigation about how invisible disabilities tend to be hidden by creative professionals in the American show business in order not to experience discrimination, having herself concealed for years her myalgic encephalomyelitis, or chronic fatigue syndrome, she had had since 1988. [8]

Works

Books

Plays

  • Second Coming of Joan of Arc, a one-woman show in which Joan of Arc speaks to contemporary audiences
  • Ugly Ducklings, about blossoming lesbian love and homophobia at a girls' summer camp
  • The Anastasia Trials in the Court of Women, an audience participation courtroom drama presenting the trial of five women who betrayed the Anastasia Romanov of Russia
  • Thanatron, a dysfunctional family comedy
  • The Amazon All-Stars is a musical, the first lesbian full-book musical published by a mainstream publisher
  • The A-Mazing Yamashita and the Gold-diggers of 2008 (one-act play)
  • The Amazon All-stars (musical)
  • Amy Lowell: in Her Own Words (one-woman show)
  • The Anastasia Trials in the Court of Women (full-length play)
  • Artemisia and Hildegarde (one-act play)
  • Babe: An Olympian Musical (musical)
  • Battered on Broadway (one-act play)
  • Bite My Thumb (one-act play)
  • Blackeye (10-minute play)
  • The Boundary Trial of John Proctor (one-act play)
  • Calamity Jane Sends a Message to Her Daughter (one-act play)
  • Coming About (full-length play)
  • Cookin' with Typhoid Mary (one-act play) [9]
  • The Countess and the Lesbians (one-act play)
  • The Clarity of Pizza (5-Minute Play)
  • The Drum Lesson (one-act play)
  • Entr'acte (one-act play)
  • Esther and Vashti (full-length play)
  • The Evil That Men Do: The Story of Thalidomide (one-act play)
  • Extravagant Love: the Life of Violette LeDuc (one-woman show)
  • The Goddess Tour (full-length play)
  • Harriet Tubman Visits a Therapist (one-act play)
  • Heterosexuals Anonymous (one-act play)
  • Jane Addams and the Devil Baby (one-act play)
  • A Labor Play (one-act play)
  • The Ladies' Room (5-minute play)
  • The Last Reading of Charlotte Cushman (one-woman show)
  • Leading Ladies (Musical) [10]
  • Louisa May Incest (one-act play)
  • Mason-dixon (one-act play)
  • The Obligatory Scene (one-act play)
  • The Parmachene Belle (one-act play)
  • Patricide (one-act play)
  • The P.E. Teacher (one-act play)
  • The Pele Chant (one-act play)
  • The Poorly-Written Play Festival (one-act play)
  • Radicals (one-act play)
  • The Rules of the Playground (one-act play)
  • Sappho in Love (full-length play)
  • The Second Coming of Joan of Arc (one-woman show)
  • Souvenirs of Eden (one-act play)
  • The Spindle (full-length play)
  • Stigmata (full-length play)
  • Thanatron (full-length play)
  • Ugly Ducklings (full-length play)
  • Valerie Solanas at Matteawan (one-act play)
  • Women on the Land (musical)

Awards

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Ugly Duckling</span> Fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen

"The Ugly Duckling" is a Danish literary fairy tale by Danish poet and author Hans Christian Andersen (1805–1875). It was first published on 11 November 1843 in New Fairy Tales. First Volume. First Collection, with three other tales by Andersen in Copenhagen, Denmark to great critical acclaim. The tale has been adapted to various media including opera, musical, and animated film. The tale is an original story by Andersen.

Honk! is a musical adaptation of the 1843 Hans Christian Andersen story The Ugly Duckling, incorporating a message of tolerance. The book and lyrics are by Anthony Drewe and music is by George Stiles. The musical is set in the countryside and features Ugly – a cygnet who is mistaken as an ugly duckling upon falling into his mother's nest and is rejected by everyone but Ida, a sly tomcat who only befriends him out of hunger, and several other barnyard characters.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lambda Literary Award</span> Award for published works which celebrate or explore LGBT themes

Lambda Literary Awards, also known as the "Lammys", are awarded yearly by Lambda Literary to recognize the crucial role LGBTQ writers play in shaping the world. The Lammys celebrate the very best in LGBTQ literature. The awards were instituted in 1989.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sarah Schulman</span> American writer

Sarah Miriam Schulman is an American novelist, playwright, nonfiction writer, screenwriter, gay activist, and AIDS historian. She holds an endowed chair in Nonfiction at Northwestern University and is a Fellow at the New York Institute for the Humanities. She is a recipient of the Bill Whitehead Award and the Lambda Literary Award.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Craig Lucas</span> American playwright, screenwriter, theatre director, musical actor, and film director

Craig Lucas is an American playwright, screenwriter, theatre director, musical actor, and film director.

David Drake is an American playwright, stage director, actor and author. He is best known as the author and original performer of The Night Larry Kramer Kissed Me, for which he received a Village Voice Obie Award, a 1994 Drama-Logue Award for "Outstanding Solo Performance," and a Robbie Stevens Frontiers Magazine Award for the same. Nominations include a 1994 LA Weekly Theater Award and a Lambda Literary Award nomination for "Best New Play of 1994".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">S. Bear Bergman</span> American transgender man, author, poet, playwright, and theater artist

S. Bear Bergman is an American author, poet, playwright, and theater artist. He is a trans man, and his gender identity is a main focus of his artwork.

Duncan Pflaster is an American Off-Off-Broadway playwright, composer and actor. His first play Wilder and Wilder, was produced in 1995 at Florida Playwrights' Theatre in Hollywood, FL. He now lives in New York City, where many of his plays have been produced in theatre festivals, such as the Spotlight On festival and the Midtown International Theatre Festival. His first film Strapped for Danger was produced by Scorpio Film Releasing in 2017, and the sequel Undercover Vice: Strapped for Danger II followed in 2021. Scorpio Film Releasing also brought him in for additional material on their film Code Name: Dynastud.

Joan Larkin is an American poet and playwright. She was active in the small press lesbian feminist publishing explosion in the 1970s, co-founding the independent publishing company Out & Out Books. She is now in her fourth decade of teaching writing. The science fiction writer Donald Moffitt was her brother.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John R. Gordon</span> British writer (born 1964)

John R. Gordon is a British writer. His work – novels, plays, screenplays and biography - deals with the intersections of race, sexuality and class. With Rikki Beadle-Blair he founded and runs queer-of-colour-centric indie press Team Angelica. Although he was a "white person from a white suburb", according to Gordon, in the 1980s he became deeply interested in black cultural figures such as James Baldwin, Malcolm X and Frantz Fanon, and they have influenced his work ever since.

Karin Kallmaker is an American author of lesbian fiction whose works also include those originally written under the name Laura Adams. Her writings span lesbian romance, lesbian erotica, and lesbian science-fiction/fantasy. Dubbed the Queen of Lesbian Romance, she publishes exclusively in the lesbian market as a matter of personal choice.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Terry Wolverton</span> American novelist, memoirist, poet, and editor (born 1954)

Terry Wolverton is an American novelist, memoirist, poet, and editor. Her book Insurgent Muse: Life and Art at the Woman's Building, a memoir published in 2002 by City Lights Books, was named one of the "Best Books of 2002" by the Los Angeles Times, and was the winner of the 2003 Publishing Triangle Judy Grahn Award, and a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. Her novel-in-poems Embers was a finalist for the PEN USA Litfest Poetry Award and the Lambda Literary Award.

Sarah Dreher was an American lesbian novelist and playwright, and best known for her award-winning lesbian mystery series featuring amateur sleuth Stoner McTavish.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Amber Dawn</span> Canadian writer

Amber Dawn is a Canadian writer, who won the 2012 Dayne Ogilvie Prize, presented by the Writers' Trust of Canada to an emerging lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender writer.

Jordan Harrison is a playwright. He grew up on Bainbridge Island, Washington. His play Marjorie Prime was a finalist for the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

Kristoffer Díaz is an American playwright, screenwriter, and educator. As a playwright, he has five full-length titles amongst other works which have been widely produced and developed. In 2010, he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. In 2011, The New York Times awarded Díaz with the Outstanding Playwright Award. He has worked with television networks like HBO, FX, Fox, ESPN, and Netflix. Díaz currently teaches at New York University's Gallatin School of Individualized Study. Díaz is the Head of Admissions and an associate professor at New York University Tisch School of the Arts. Diaz teaches dramatic writing and contemporary US theater. Diaz's primary focus is American plays and musicals.

Marisela Treviño Orta is a third-generation Mexican-American playwright and poet from Lockhart, Texas. She attended the University of San Francisco where she received an MFA in Writing. While she was trained in poetry, Treviño Orta began writing plays after becoming the resident poet for El Teatro Jornalero!, a Latino theatre company which focuses on social justice issues.

Jill Posener is a British photographer and playwright, known for her exploration of lesbian identity and erotica.

<i>The Gulf</i> (play) Play by American playwright Audrey Cefaly

The Gulf is a play by American playwright Audrey Cefaly. It is a recipient of the 2017 Lambda Literary Award for Drama and the 2016 Edgerton Foundation New American Play Award. The play was adapted from a one-act version, which won the 40th Annual Samuel French Off Off Broadway Short Play Festival (2015). The play takes place on a fishing boat in the author's home state of Alabama.

Audrey Cefaly is an American playwright.

References

  1. Goodenough, Elizabeth (September 2003). Secret spaces of childhood. University of Michigan Press. p. 8. ISBN   978-0-472-06845-6 . Retrieved 1 May 2011.
  2. Day, Frances Ann (June 2000). Lesbian and gay voices: an annotated bibliography and guide to literature for children and young adults. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 71. ISBN   978-0-313-31162-8 . Retrieved 1 May 2011.
  3. 1 2 Gage, Carolyn. Bio and Vitae.
  4. Goy-Blanquet, Dominique (2003). Joan of Arc, a saint for all reasons: studies in myth and politics. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. pp. 139–. ISBN   978-0-7546-3330-3 . Retrieved 1 May 2011.
  5. Gonzalez Cerna, Antonio (8 February 2010). "21st Annual Lambda Literary Awards". Lamba Literary. Retrieved 21 October 2016.
  6. "New Special Collections Items" (PDF). FYI. Eugene, Oregon: University of Oregon Libraries. Winter 2004. Retrieved 21 October 2016.
  7. "'A Theatre of Her Own': Working in Theatre as a Woman by Carolyn Gage - DC Metro Theater Arts". DC Metro Theater Arts. 2014-12-19. Retrieved 2018-09-02.
  8. "Pain Plus Silence: How Theatremakers Face Invisible Disabilities". AMERICAN THEATRE. 2018-07-31. Retrieved 2018-08-29.
  9. Leavitt, Judith Walzer (1997-07-31). Typhoid Mary: Captive to the Public's Health . Beacon Press. p.  225. ISBN   978-0-8070-2103-3 . Retrieved 1 May 2011.
  10. Kear, Lynn (2010-10-14). Laurette Taylor, American Stage Legend. McFarland. pp. 227–. ISBN   978-0-7864-5922-3 . Retrieved 1 May 2011.
  11. Madison, D. Soyini; Hamera, Judith (2006-02-02). The SAGE handbook of performance studies. SAGE. p. 171. ISBN   978-0-7619-2931-4 . Retrieved 1 May 2011.