Carolyn Gage
  • Home
    • Butch Visibility Project
    • Bio and Vitae
    • Endorsements
    • Production History
    • Catalog of Books and Plays
    • Online Essays >
      • Lesbian Culture and History Essays
      • Theatre Essays
      • Feminist Essays
      • Tributes/Obituaries
      • Reviews
    • Interviews >
      • Audio/Video Interviews
      • Print Interviews
  • Books and CD's
    • Gage Play Anthologies
    • Feminist Thought And Spirituality
    • Lesbian Theatre
    • CD's and DVD's
    • Anthologies with Other Authors
    • Journal Anthologies
  • 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
    • Gage Performances and Appearances
    • Productions of Gage's Work
  • Contact/Storefront
    • Privacy Policy
  • Blog

Nine Short Plays
Paperback
eBook (EPUB)
eBook (PDF)
Kindle
Read the review in the Lambda Book Report.

Picture
"As Carolyn Gage is one of the best lesbian playwrights in America, [Nine Short Plays] is an intellectual banquet... the reader will get the education of a lifetime." -- Lambda Book Report, Los Angeles.

“…  complex and beautiful…”--Lesbian Connections, East Lansing, MI.

"... each of these dramas is also built around the woman or women who resist, who keep their truth, who come to consciousness, who fight back alone or together."
-- Elliott batTzedek [Read complete review]

Nine Short Plays is a collection of the best of Gage's one-act plays from 1988 to 2007.

In these plays, Gage explores the impact of the dominant culture on intimate relationships, illustrating with dramatic intensity how interpersonal dynamics reflect political paradigms. For example, in Louisa May Incest, the author of Little Women is confronted by her alter ego Jo March for her decisions to force her spunky heroine to burn her writing, abandon her career, and marry an impoverished, unambitious older man.

One of Gage's strongest themes is internalized oppression. In Patricide, an incest survivor confronts her father in a telephone conversation. The real dialogue, however, is between her self-doubt and her need to assert her truth.

Another theme of the plays is the impact of colonization on the human spirit. The Pele Chant, a play about the daughter of Hawaii's Queen Liliuokalani, explores how the often hidden mechanism of spiritual colonization can be the "Trojan horse" through which entire dominions are lost.

And, as always, the conflict between Gage's love for theatre and her critique of its historical misogyny is represented in the collection. Bite My Thumb is a satirical look at cross-dressing and gender-bending as practiced -- or not -- by a mainstream rep company and a women's theatre. Battered on Broadway examines the masochism and martyrdom embedded in female roles in the traditional Broadway musical. In Entr'acte, the war comes home in a play about a rape that occurred backstage during a Broadway run of a play that romanticized domestic violence. The victim, lesbian actress Eva Le Gallienne, is in a sanatorium, facing the crisis of her career -- a crisis that will lead to her founding of one of the most famous theatres in the world.

Gage describes her process in the introduction:

My "modus operandi" is to tell a story wherein the character's irresistible impulsion, usually toward some form of freedom, is checked by a seemingly immoveable force of society. If the characters have enough integrity and the situation enough authenticity, I find myself, at least for a while, wrestling with angels or demons. And then there is a break-through, a shift into another paradigm, where radical possibility abounds. This is why I write.

The anthology includes The Obligatory Scene, Bite My Thumb, Entr'acte or The Night Eva Le Gallienne Was Raped, The Pele Chant, Louisa May Incest, The Rules of the Playground, Patricide, Jane Addams and the Devil Baby, and Battered on Broadway.

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.