The Parmachene Belle
Written and Performed by Carolyn Gage
Synopsis:
Gage as 'The Parmachene Belle'
Cornelia Crosby, a 19th century lesbian, was the first licensed hunting guide in Maine. Six feet tall and known as “Fly Rod,” she led fishing and hunting expeditions for wealthy vacationers in the Rangeley Lake district.
The play opens on the day that Fly Rod, who has been sidelined to a hospital bed in Portland with a serious knee injury, is scheduled for surgery. She may, in fact, never walk again. This prognosis poses a threat not only to her livelihood, but also to her plans to rendez-vous with Annie Oakley in New York at the annual Sportsman’s Exhibition. Having listened to the stories of Annie’s sexual abuse as a child, Fly Rod has become obsessed with “rescuing” her.
Hoping to lure Annie away from the Wild West Show, Fly Rod proposes to teach Annie the art of fly-fishing. Explaining the difference between “imitations,” the flies designed to replicate actual species of insects and “fancies,” the flies that make no attempt to resemble anything except themselves, Fly Rod notes that she and Annie are “fancies”—like the Parmachene Belle. It is her dream to wean Annie away from her obsessive practice with gun
The play opens on the day that Fly Rod, who has been sidelined to a hospital bed in Portland with a serious knee injury, is scheduled for surgery. She may, in fact, never walk again. This prognosis poses a threat not only to her livelihood, but also to her plans to rendez-vous with Annie Oakley in New York at the annual Sportsman’s Exhibition. Having listened to the stories of Annie’s sexual abuse as a child, Fly Rod has become obsessed with “rescuing” her.
Hoping to lure Annie away from the Wild West Show, Fly Rod proposes to teach Annie the art of fly-fishing. Explaining the difference between “imitations,” the flies designed to replicate actual species of insects and “fancies,” the flies that make no attempt to resemble anything except themselves, Fly Rod notes that she and Annie are “fancies”—like the Parmachene Belle. It is her dream to wean Annie away from her obsessive practice with gun
"Fly Rod" Opens a Gift from Annie Oakley
Fly Rod’s optimistic fantasizing is disrupted when she opens a gift that Annie has sent her. It is an arrow case that belonged to the famous Indian warrior Sitting Bull. Disturbed by the potential meaning of the gift, Fly Rod reflects on the death of Sitting Bull, who was killed for his participation in the Ghost Dance, a form of ecstatic trance-dancing believed to bring back the buffalo and get rid of the white man.
Outcasts, misfits, and survivors—Annie, Fly Rod, and Sitting Bull all struggled to invent ways to continue in the face of shattered dreams and hopeless prospects. Fly Rod, in her monologue, wrestles with her fears and negotiates the fine line between faith and denial as she constructs a system of belief that will hold some possibility of happiness for her, a lesbian in a heterosexual man’s world.
35 minutes
Single set
Production History:
Set for The Parmachene Belle
- 2016, Criterion Theatre, Bar Harbor Pride, Bar Harbor, ME.
- 2016, Lesbian Theatre Retreat, Highlands Inn, Bethlehem, NH
- 2014, excerpt, Word Portland, LFK, Portland, ME.
- 2013, East Lansing, Michigan State University.
- 2010, (Excerpt), Society of the Muse of the Southwest (SOMOS), Mabel Dodge Luhan House, Taos, NM
- 2008, Winner, Lambda Literary Award in Drama, (The Second Coming of Joan of Arc and Selected Plays).
- 2009, Black Hills Equality Pride Festival, Rapid City, SD.
- 2009, Lord Leebrick Theatre, Eugene, OR.
- 2009, We Are 1 Conference, Durham, NC.
- 2009, St. Lawrence Arts Center, Portland, ME.
- 2009, Brewster Unitarian Universalist Church, Brewster, MA.
- 2009, Unitarian Universalist Church of Saco and Biddeford, Saco, ME.
- 2009, Maine Association of Community Theatres Conference, Auburn, ME.
- 2007, Published in The Harbor Journal, Cozy Harbor Press, Southport, ME
- National Women’s Music Festival, Univ. of Illinois, Normal,IL.
- Fresh Fruit Festival, NYC.
- Off-Broadway performance, Bleecker Street Theatre, NYC
- New England Academy of Theatre One-Act Play Festival,New Haven, CT.
- Published in Harrington Lesbian Fiction Quarterly, Binghamton, NY.
- Finalist, Maine Playwrights Award, Acorn Theatre, Portland, ME.
- Excerpted in Still More Monologues for Women, By Women, ed. by Tori Haring- Smith (Heinemann Books, Portsmouth,NH.)
Endorsements:
“… Carolyn Gage is one of the best lesbian playwrights in America…”--Lambda Book Report, Los Angeles.
“The work of an experienced and esteemed playwright like Carolyn Gage is the air that modern theatre needs.” —Jewelle Gomez, author of The Gilda Stories, San Francisco Arts Commissioner.
“Carolyn Gage is a fabulous feminist playwright, and a major one too. This is great theatre. Gage’s dramatic and lesbian imagination is utterly original… daring, heartbreaking, principled, bitter, and often very funny… There is no rhetoric here: only one swift and pleasurable intake of breath after another… Women’s mental health would improve, instantly, were they able to read and see these plays performed.”—Phyllis Chesler, author of Women and Madness.
“Carolyn Gage is to lesbian playwriting as Georgia O’Keefe is to women in American art: You can scarcely think of one without the other.” --off our backs, Washington, DC
“… The undisputed queen of startling one-acts.” --Victoria K. Brownworth, Pulitzer Prize nominee, author of Too Queer.
“Gage’s particular brilliance lies in her skill at juxtaposing lesbian reality with our collective herstoric imagination as a people... Lesbian writers, theorists, and professors—in large numbers at ECLF [East Coast Lesbian Festival]—were absolutely transported by the academic significance of Gage’s work.” —Bonnie Morris, Senior Associate at the Center for Women and Policy Studies and 5-year staff member Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival.
"The whole selection felt musical to me as an audience member. It was a great read on page, but aloud all those names of flies, when coupled with that Maine accent, and all those wacky verbs, were something else. You had the bar up in stitches laughing and then brought them back down to tenderly explain the metaphor, and the love. It was fantastic."-- WordPortland
“The work of an experienced and esteemed playwright like Carolyn Gage is the air that modern theatre needs.” —Jewelle Gomez, author of The Gilda Stories, San Francisco Arts Commissioner.
“Carolyn Gage is a fabulous feminist playwright, and a major one too. This is great theatre. Gage’s dramatic and lesbian imagination is utterly original… daring, heartbreaking, principled, bitter, and often very funny… There is no rhetoric here: only one swift and pleasurable intake of breath after another… Women’s mental health would improve, instantly, were they able to read and see these plays performed.”—Phyllis Chesler, author of Women and Madness.
“Carolyn Gage is to lesbian playwriting as Georgia O’Keefe is to women in American art: You can scarcely think of one without the other.” --off our backs, Washington, DC
“… The undisputed queen of startling one-acts.” --Victoria K. Brownworth, Pulitzer Prize nominee, author of Too Queer.
“Gage’s particular brilliance lies in her skill at juxtaposing lesbian reality with our collective herstoric imagination as a people... Lesbian writers, theorists, and professors—in large numbers at ECLF [East Coast Lesbian Festival]—were absolutely transported by the academic significance of Gage’s work.” —Bonnie Morris, Senior Associate at the Center for Women and Policy Studies and 5-year staff member Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival.
"The whole selection felt musical to me as an audience member. It was a great read on page, but aloud all those names of flies, when coupled with that Maine accent, and all those wacky verbs, were something else. You had the bar up in stitches laughing and then brought them back down to tenderly explain the metaphor, and the love. It was fantastic."-- WordPortland
Online Articles about Gage's performance of The Parmachene Belle
"Writers on the Storm: SOMOS spotlights lesbian and American Indian writers" by Tara Somerville, Taos News, Taos, NM, February 18, 2010.
