Carolyn Gage
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  • Plays
    • One-Woman Shows >
      • The Second Coming of Joan of Arc
      • La Seconde Venue de Jeanne d'Arc
      • Joana Dark - a re-volta
      • Giovanna d'Arco - la rivolta
      • ВТОРОТО ПРИШЕСТВИЕ НА ЖАНА Д’АРК (Bulgarian tranlsation of The Second Coming of Joan
      • 贞德再临_中文 (Mandarin translation of The Second Coming of Joan of Arc)
      • The Last Reading of Charlotte Cushman
      • Crossing the Rapelands
    • Musicals >
      • The Amazon All-Stars
      • Babe! An Olympian Musical
      • How to Write a Country-Western Song
      • Leading Ladies
      • Women on the Land
    • Full-Length Plays >
      • The Abolition Plays
      • The Anastasia Trials in the Court of Women
      • AXED!
      • Black Star
      • Coming About
      • Esther and Vashti
      • The Goddess Tour
      • In McClintock's Corn
      • Sappho in Love
      • The Spindle
      • Stigmata
      • Thanatron
      • Ugly Ducklings
    • One-Acts >
      • Ain't Got No - I Got Life
      • The A-Mazing Yamashita and the Millennial Gold-Diggers
      • Artemisia and Hildegard
      • Battered on Broadway
      • Bite My Thumb
      • The Boundary Trial of John Proctor
      • Cookin' with Typhoid Mary
      • The Countess and the Lesbians
      • The Drum Lesson
      • Easter Sunday
      • Entr'acte or The Night Eva Le Gallienne Was Raped
      • The Evil That Men Do: The Story of Thalidomide
      • Female Nude Seated
      • The Gage and Mr. Comstock
      • The Greatest Actress Who Ever Lived
      • Harriet Tubman Visits A Therapist
      • Head in the Game
      • Hermeneutic Circlejerk
      • Heterosexuals Anonymous
      • Jane Addams and the Devil Baby
      • A Labor Play
      • Lace Curtain Irish
      • Lighting Martha
      • Little Sister
      • Louisa May Incest
      • Mason-Dixon
      • The Obligatory Scene
      • The P.E. Teacher
      • The Parmachene Belle
      • The Pele Chant
      • Planchette
      • The Poorly-Written Play Festival
      • Radicals
      • The Rules of the Playground
      • St. Frances and the Fallen Angels
      • Souvenirs from Eden
      • Starpattern
      • 'Til the Fat Lady Sings
      • Valerie Solanas At Matteawan
    • Short Short Plays >
      • 52 Pickup
      • At Sea
      • Black Eye
      • El Bobo
      • Calamity Jane Sends a Message to Her Daughter
      • The Clarity of Pizza
      • The Great Fire
      • Hrotsvitha's Vision
      • The Intimacy Coordinator
      • The Ladies' Room
      • Miss Le Gallienne Announces the New Season
      • On the Other Hand
      • Patricide
      • The Pickle Play
    • Dramatic Adaptations >
      • Amy Lowell: In Her Own Words
      • Brett Remembers
      • Deep Haven
      • El Bobo (one-act play)
      • El Bobo (short screenplay)
      • Emily & Sue >
        • Touring Production of Emily & Sue >
          • The Creative Team
          • Director's Vision
          • Adaptor's notes
          • Open Me Carefully
      • I Have Come to Show You Death
      • Speak Fully The One Awful Word
      • We Too Are Drifting (Screenplay)
    • Special Index: Plays That Deal with Sexual Violence Against Women and Girls
    • Special Index: Women's History Plays
    • Special Index: Romantic Plays with Happy Endings
  • Touring Work
    • Performances >
      • Lace Curtain Irish
      • Crossing the Rapelands
      • The Parmachene Belle (performance)
      • Calamity Jane Sends a Message to Her Daughter (performance)
      • Gage on Stage
    • Lectures >
      • Lizzie Borden and Lesbian Theatre
      • The Secret Life of Lesbians
      • Paradigms and Paradigm-Shifting
      • When Sex Is Not the Metaphor For Intimacy
      • Meeting the Ghost of Hamlet's Father
      • A Theatrical Journey Through Maine's Lesbian History
      • Tara and Other Lies
      • Teena Brandon's Inconvenient Truth
    • Workshops >
      • The Art of the Dramatic Monologue
      • Acting Lesbian
      • Interrupting Racism: A Workshop
      • Playwriting Techniques for Poets and Fiction Writers
      • Ugly Ducklings Workshop
    • Residencies
    • The Lesbian Tent Revival >
      • Testimonials
      • The Lesbian Tent Revival Radio Hour Podcasts
      • The Lesbian Tent Revival Sermon on Dying Well
      • Sermons for a Lesbian Tent Revival
      • Supplemental Sermons
      • Hotter Than Hell
      • The Synapse Pendant
    • Cauldron & Labrys >
      • A Brief History
      • Upcoming Productions
  • Calendar
    • Productions of Gage's Work and Appearances
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Bio and Vitae

Picture
Photo by Helen E. Walsh
Carolyn Gage is a neurodivergent playwright, performer, director, and activist. The author of nine collections of lesbian- and feminist-themed plays and seventy-five plays, musicals, and one-woman shows, she specializes in non-traditional roles for women, especially those reclaiming famous lesbians whose stories have been distorted or erased from history.

In 2022, her play In McClintock’s Corn was a National Finalist for the Jane Chambers Award, sponsored by the Women in Theatre Program of the Association of Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE). In 2021, her play Esther and Vashti was a National Finalist for the Jewish Play Contest sponsored by the Jewish Play Project.
 
For twenty-two years, Gage toured in the US, Canada, and in Europe in her award-winning, one-woman play, The Second Coming of Joan of Arc, offering performances, workshops, and lectures on lesbian theatre. From 2003 to 2016, she ran a production company, Cauldron & Labrys in Portland, Maine, where she workshopped and produced her own plays, frequently sending them to regional or national bookings.
 
In 2014, Gage was one of six featured playwrights at the 53rd Annual World Theatre Day, sponsored by UNESCO, and held in Rome. In 2015, the Sophia Smith Collection at Smith College acquired her papers.
 
Gage’s work has won many state and national awards, including the Lambda Literary Award in Drama for best LGBT books in the US (The Second Coming of Joan of Arc and Selected Plays), nomination for the Steinberg Award by the American Theatre Critics Association (Ugly Ducklings), international finalist for the Venice Biennale (The Anastasia Trials in the Court of Women), Curve Magazine’s Lesbian Theatre Award (Babe!), the Maine Literary Award in Drama from the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance (Stigmata), the Oregon Playwrights Award from the Oregon Institute of Literary Arts (The Second Coming of Joan of Arc), national finalist for the Heideman Award by the Actors’ Theatre of Louisville (The Ladies’ Room), national finalist for the Jane Chambers Award by the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (The Anastasia Trials in the Court of Women.), and winner of the Samuel French Off-Off Broadway Festival (Harriet Tubman Visits A Therapist.) Her work has been published by Applause Books and by Samuel French. (Stigmata was a national finalist for the Jane Chambers Award, but was withdrawn because it did not meet the unpublished qualification.)  She has written the first book of lesbian themed scenes and monologues, as well as the first manual for lesbian theatre production, Take Stage!
 
Her work has been published in 37 anthologies, including three Lambda Literary Award winners. Her award-winning play about lesbians at a girls’ summer camp, Ugly Ducklings, was the subject of a national documentary and anti-bullying campaign that premiered at the Frameline International Film Festival in San Francisco.
 
Her essays and short stories have been published in the Dramatists Guild Quarterly, The Michigan Quarterly Review, Dignity: A Journal of Sexual Exploitation and Violence, Trivia, Sinister Wisdom, Lesbian Ethics, The Lesbian Review of Books, The Gay and Lesbian Review, and off our backs. In addition to writing the acclaimed Like There's No Tomorrow: Meditations for Women Leaving Patriarchy, Gage has also written four volumes of lesbian-feminist essays on a range of subjects, delivered as "sermons" given by "Sister Carolyn" in her riotously funny Lesbian Tent Revival, which she staged at various lesbian gatherings around the country for a decade. She writes a popular blog on subjects including feminist theatre, lesbian history and culture, child sexual abuse, incest, rape, and women's history. Her blog includes reviews and interviews.
 
She has taught as a year-long Guest Lecturer in the Theatre Department at Bates College and was a Landsdowne Visiting Scholar at the University of Victoria in British Columbia. She has been an adjunct professor at the University of Southern Maine, and has taught in their Stonecoast MFA Writers’ program.
 
She has been awarded residencies at the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation in Taos (three months), at the University of Maine in Machias, at Hewnoaks Artists’ Residency in Maine, and the Walden Writers’ Residency from Lewis and Clark College.
 
Gage’s work has been endorsed by acclaimed feminist authors and activists, including Andrea Dworkin, Jewell Gomez, Mary Daly, Phyllis Chesler, Victoria A. Brownworth, Diana E.H. Russell, and John Stoltenberg. She won the national Lynda Hart Memorial Grant from the Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice. Gage has also received the Janine C. Rae Award for the Advancement of Women’s Culture from the National Women’s Music Festival. Former recipients include Audre Lorde, June Jordan, Margarethe Cammermeyer, Nikki Giovanni, Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon. In 2009, because of her advocacy for LGBT youth, she was named one of the “Ten Most Intriguing People in Maine” by Portland Magazine.
 
Gage currently lives on Mount Desert Island, where she continues to write and occasionally perform.


Curriculum Vitae:

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