Gage, Carolyn (1952 - )

Genre: Drama/Theatre/Film

Carolyn Gage, a lesbian-feminist playwright, performer, director, and activist, was born in Richmond, Virginia, and now lives in Portland, Maine. She received both her B.A. and M.A. in Theatre Arts from Portland State University in Portland, Oregon, in 1982 and 1984 respectively. She has taught Playwriting and Lesbian Poetry in the University of Southern Maine Continuing Eduction Program, and since 1999 has toured regularly as a lecturer, workshop presenter, and resident artist at colleges and universities. She was visiting professor at Bates Collegein 1998-1999 and adjunct professor at the Univ. of Southern Maine in 1998. She was also founder and director of Cauldron & Labrys Productions in Portland, Maine (2001-2005), director and resident playwright for the League of Lesbian Actors in Santa Rosa, CA (1992-1993), and founder and artistic director for other theatre companies from 1985 to 1991.

Gage tours in her award-winning, one-woman show, The Second Coming of Joan of Arc, which has been the subject of a feature on National Public Radio, and was produced in Brazil in 2002. She's received a number of grants and awards, including the Oregon Playwrights Award from the Oregon Institute of Literary Arts, awards from the Maine Arts Commission and the Oregon Arts Commission, and a research grant in 2002-2003 from the Maine Women Writers' Collection at the University of New England. In 2002, she received the Jeanine Rae Award for the Advancement of Women's Culture from Women in the Arts.

She has been published in the Dramatists Guild Quarterly, Sinister Wisdom, Lesbian Ethics, The Lesbian Review of Books, The Harvard Gay and Lesbian Review, The Michigan Quarterly Review, and off our backs.

Selected Bibliography

  • The Second Coming of Joan of Arc and Other Plays (1994; national finalist for the 1995 Lambda Literary Awards in Drama)
  • Take Stage! How To Direct and Produce A Lesbian Play (1997)
  • Like There's No Tomorrow: Meditations for Women Leaving Patriarchy (1997).
  • Monologues and Scenes for Lesbian Actors (1999)
  • Ten Short Plays by Carolyn Gage (2006)
  • The Princess of Pain (2006; a novella, with illustrations by Sudie Rakusin), in Harrington Lesbian Fiction Quarterly
  • The Anastasia Trials in the Court of Women
  • Coming About; Esther and Vashti;
  • Ugly Ducklings (nominated by the American Theatre Critics Association for the ATCA/Steinberg New Play Award)
  • The Last Reading of Charlotte Cushman (national winner of the $3000 Arch and Bruce Brown Foundation Grant for best play about a lesbian historical figure)
  • The Parmachene Belle (won the Maine Playwrights Award, Acorn Acting School, Portland, Maine)
  • The Poorly-Written Play Festival (winner of the 2005 Maine Short Play Festival, Portland, Maine)

Selected Resources