Bowker Biography:
Carolyn Gage

Carolyn Gage is a lesbian feminist playwright, performer, director, and activist. The author of four books on lesbian theatre and forty-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. Gage's collection of plays, The Second Coming of Joan of Arc and Other Plays was named national finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in drama. Last year the play was seen by more than 200,000 Brazilians in a production that was the most successful show of the season in both Rio and in Sao Paolo. The play has also been the subject of a recent half-hour interview for National Public Radio.

Her musical Leading Ladies was read last fall on Broadway, at the Dramatists Guild, as the first step toward Off-Broadway production. Her one act, 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 has been published the play in a collection of festival winners. A professional reading of the play, funded by a Ford Foundation grant, was given at a national leadership conference for historically Black colleges at Howard University. The Last Reading of Charlotte Cushman was national winner of the $3000 Arch and Bruce Brown Foundation Grant for best play about a lesbian historical figure, and will be published in 2003 by the University of Wisconsin Press. Her play Sappho in Love won ABest Stage Play@ at the Moondance International Women=s Film Festival and has had productions in Chicago, Las Vegas, and Colorado. The Anastasia Trials in the Court of Women, published by Samuel French, was featured this spring in The Washington Post.

Gage's musical, The Amazon All Stars is the first lesbian full book musical ever published by a mainstream play publisher. Published by Applause Books, it is the title work of an anthology of lesbian plays that was a national finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. In 1997, her manual on lesbian theatre production, Take Stage! How to Direct and Produce a Lesbian Play was published by Scarecrow Press. Gage has also written Monologues and Scenes for Lesbian Actors, the first collection of its kind in the world. (Odd Girls Press, 1999). Odd Girls is also publishing the CD of her performance as Joan of Arc.

Gage's work has been endorsed by Andrea Dworkin, Mary Daly, Phyllis Chesler, Victoria A. Brownworth, Diana E.H. Russell, and John Stoltenberg. In 1996, Gage was named contributing editor to the national feminist quarterly On The Issues, which featured her on the cover in 1995. Gage has also been published in the Dramatists Guild Quarterly, Trivia, Sinister Wisdom, Lesbian Ethics, The Lesbian Review of Books, The Harvard Gay and Lesbian Review, The Michigan Quarterly Review, and off our backs. Gage has written the first meditation book for activists, Like There's No Tomorrow: Meditations for Women Leaving Patriarchy. The University of Oregon has requested her personal papers for their Special Collections.

Gage was a Guest Lecturer at Bates College in 1998-99. She has won the Oregon Playwrights Award from the Oregon Institute of Literary Arts. She has also been awarded a research grant from the Maine Women Writers’ Collection at the University of New England, the Walden Writer's Fellowship from Lewis and Clark College, the Oregon Institute of Literary Arts Writer's Grant, and the Oregon Arts Commission Individual Artist Grant. In 2002, she received the Janine C. Rae Cultural 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.

On the roster of the national speakers' bureau Speak Out!, Gage offers performances of her award winning one woman show, The Second Coming of Joan of Arc, as well as her dramatic and provocative presentation on lesbian theatre history: "Lizzie Borden and Lesbian Theatre: Axes to Grind." In addition, she offers workshops and residencies on "Non-Traditional Roles for Women: A Directing/Acting Workshop with Attitude." She runs Cauldron and Labrys, a theatre for women in Portland, Maine.

 

 

Web: www.carolyngage.com
Email: carolyn@carolyngage.com