Books, Plays, Musicals,

One-Acts, and
One-Woman Shows
By

Carolyn Gage

www.carolyngage.com
http://stores.lulu.com/carolyngage
 How to Order the Books and Plays:

All plays and books may be ordered from:

https://carolyngage.weebly.com/storefront.html as
either hard copy or downloads.

Almost all of my books and plays are available on

Kindle.

Please check my website for the production, awards,

and publication histories of the plays.
www.carolyngage.com.

For customers outside the US, contact the author at

carolyn@carolyngage.com.

Catalog is also online at www.carolyngage.com.

ii
What Others Are Saying:
“… Carolyn Gage is one of the best lesbian playwrights in America…”
—Lambda Book Report, Los Angeles.

“Gage is regularly hailed as one of the best lesbian playwrights

in America, but I want to say—if she will allow this and I
understand and accept if she won’t—simply one of our best
playwrights.”—Sharon Doubiago, My Father’s Love, Portrait of the
Poet as a Young Girl; Love on the Streets, Selected and New Poems.

“… a whole women’s theatre tradition in one volume… wonderful to

read—rich, original, deeply affirming—and must be phenomenal to
see on stage. The culture of women we have never had is invented
in Carolyn Gage’s brilliant and beautiful plays.” —Andrea Dworkin,
feminist philosopher activist, and author.

“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.

"You know in advance that Anything by Carolyn Gage is going to be

interesting. It might even be genius. Over the years I have come to
know her work in many genres which were produced in our festivals.
Consistently well-crafted, and more importantly, brimming with
humanity and insight."--Louis Lopardi, Executive Director of All
Out Arts (producer of Fresh Fruit Festival), NYC

"You know in advance that Anything by Carolyn Gage is going to be

interesting. It might even be genius. Over the years I have come to
know her work in many genres which were produced in our festivals.
Consistently well-crafted, and more importantly, brimming with
humanity and insight."--Louis Lopardi, Executive Director of All
Out Arts (producer of Fresh Fruit Festival), NYC

“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.

“… the toughest, most lesbian/feminist-identified work for theatre I

know… brilliant and daring scripts...” —John Stoltenberg, former

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Executive Editor, On the Issues, author of Refusing to Become
A Man.

“Mahalo nui for your play. It is splendid, clever, and sets the
characters in an imaginary world that is,nevertheless, quite
believable. The mark of superb craftsmanship...! Ku’e, ku’e,ku’e!
[Resist, resist, resist!]” —Haunani-Kay Trask, leader of the
Hawai’ian Sovereignty Movement.

“I was more deeply moved and ‘sinspired’ by Carolyn Gage’s new

book [Like There’s No Tomorrow] than by anything else I’ve read in
years… It is a work of burning, uncompromising vision and daring…
a beacon of hope in these chilling times of compromise, timidity and
apparent defeat. This book is Pure Fire. It is true and therefore
extreme… a stunning manifestation of Radical Lesbian Feminist
Courage and Genius.” —Mary Daly, Radical Feminist Elemental
Philosopher and Author of Gyn/Ecology, Pure Lust, and The
Wickedary.

“Carolyn Gage's visit was transformative for my department. Students

were able to have close contact with a world-class artist. In a brief
Q&A, Carolyn firmly and respectfully challenged their assumptions
about the boundaries of art, education, and culture. She responded
with enthusiasm and generosity to their staged reading of one of her
short works, which gave them a strong sense of connection with this
renowned artist. And we all experienced her extraordinarily moving
and enlightening Joan of Arc in our own small theatre, sharing a truly
powerful, and for some students life-changing, evening of
performance.”—Dr. Ellen Margolis, Chair of Theatre & Dance,
Pacific University, Forest Grove, OR.

“Carolyn Gage’s writing, acting, and teaching are explosive. She rips
away the cultural camouflage that permits us to accept, to be blind to,
the brutal context in which women are still required to live their lives.
When my students remember this semester it will be because of her
visit. She’s a treasure.” —Prof. George Wolf, Dept. of English,
University of Nebraska, Lincoln.

“Many feminists are brilliant, but how many are wise? Playwright
Carolyn Gage is a radical lesbian feminist who is wise, as this book
[Like There’s No Tomorrow] demonstrates. I read the book recently
and realized that I had made a great mistake not reading and
reviewing it when it came out, probably because I was biased against
the word “meditations.” So often radical feminist books are
depressing; I admire them but wish for some inspiration. This book is

iv
uncompromising and tough-minded, yet inspiring.” —Carol Anne
Douglas, off our backs, Washington, DC.

“We were so delighted with Carolyn’s powerful drama and her

personable style of teaching that Carefree [retirement community]
women asked her to return and be our first Artist-in-Residence…
Participating in the readings and listening to the performances were
powerful experiences for the women of our community. Carolyn’s
dramatic works, her teaching methods, and her passionate belief in
women inspired many of us to look at our lives and come to see
ourselves as heroines and Amazons. Her ability to clothe her
meticulous research and knowledge of women’s and especially
lesbian history in enthralling dramas helped many of us to realize our
rich lesbian/feminist heritage… she’s personable, down-to-earth,
and fun to be with. Her time with us was intense, fascinating, and a
lot of fun. Who could ask for more?” —Dana G. Finnegan, PhD.,
Leader of Writers’ Workshop at Clubhouse for Resort on
Carefree Boulevard, Ft. Myers.

“Ms. Gage’s visit to Washington College was inspiring. Her passion

for what she does is so obvious and her intellect so impressive that
students and faculty alike were immediately and permanently
engaged by her presentation and presence.

Washington College is, in part, known for it’s writing program. We

have regular visits by well known writers—everyone from Edward
Albee and Israel Horovitz to Toni Morrison and John Barth in recent
years. I can honestly say I have never seen students so enthusiastic
about a guest. Another thing that is unusual and impressive is that
she has kept in touch with several of our students since her visit.

One of the things I was most impressed with was the clarity of her
aesthetics and politics. This is a person who does not apologize for
her agenda or the militancy necessary to further that agenda. The
amazing thing is she combines that unswerving commitment with
compassion, understanding, warmth, and generosity. She is totally
committed to her art in a way that is truly inspiring. Don’t let the
lesbian/feminist moniker scare you, this is a formidable artist in every
way.” —Dale Daigle, PhD., Theatre Department Chair,
Washington College, Chesterton, MD.

“Recalling The Second Coming of Joan of Arc leaves me practically

speechless, but boiling over on the inside with sadness and a hunger
to “right all the wrongs” of the world. Never before have I attended an

v
event at my University that evoked tears and heartache and feelings
of invincibility and empowerment simultaneously. In Dorothy Allison’s
book Skin, she encourages women to speak and write ourselves raw,
until we are vulnerable and we produce captivating and personal art
that evokes tears, laughter, and rage from the audience. Carolyn
Gage epitomizes Allison’s vision. Her brilliant performance touches
everyone deeply by providing an educational, cathartic,
heartbreaking, and empowering experience. She speaks the
unspeakable truths about women’s oppression that most of us are
afraid to say…”—Kristina Armenakis, Women’s Resource Center,
University of Oregon, Eugene, OR.

“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.

“Carolyn Gage is a living manifestation of the power of articulate

anger. Her play is raw, uncompromising, in your face, and her politics
are no different. In the flesh, however, her passion, humour and
quicksilver insight shine through her rage against the patriarchal
machine. An inspired spokeswoman for revolutionary radical
feminism, I love to think of Carolyn out there now, urging women all
over the world to access that submerged anger that, once released,
will enable them to find hope, pleasure, selfhood.” —Women’s
News, Belfast, Northern Ireland

“While it was probably the novelty of having a lesbian feminist in

Hattiesburg, Mississippi that brought the people out, it was Carolyn’s
intelligence, wit and charisma that motivated us to participate. Her
complex mixture of righteous anger and compassion and her insight
into the human psyche inspired those of us who live with the daily
oppression of southern patriarchal culture to open our minds and
hearts and speak our truths. When we left the theater that night, we
had all been touched by Carolyn’s powerful politics.” —Dr. Kate
Greene, University of Southern Mississippi.

“… powerful and moving, to the point of angry, as well as sorrowful

tears… Your truthful and emotional performance should be
mandatory for all students—especially women, who need to make
decisions and choices in their lives often based on the same issues
that Jeanne confronted in her own pilgrimage.” —Karla Alwes,
PhD., Professor of English, State University of New York,
Cortland.

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“… Superb acting… Enjoyable first-rate theater performance, and a
rich source for thoughtful analysis and evaluation of the
representation of heroines by the patriarchal control institutions...” —
Hilda Hidalgo, PhD.,Professor Emerita, Rutgers University.

“Calamity Jane Delivers A Message to Her Daughter was one of the

best acting performances of this [Dublin International Gay Theatre]
Festival. Carolyn Gage was mesmeric as the aging infamous female
cowboy recalling happier times. Both writing and performance were
of the highest standards and it was a riveting piece of comic theatre…
you could almost smell the booze!” —Gordon Farrell, Queer ID,
Dublin.

“Ever since I first saw Carolyn Gage perform her work, I have been
convinced that she is one of our greatest living artists… the value of
Gage’s plays goes far beyond their ability to hold and entertain
audiences. I know of no living playwright who is grappling with issues
as controversial and as central to the survival of our people as
Carolyn Gage. Possibly the most potentially transformative work of
our time is the work on trauma conducted by psychologists and
academics as well as within feminist and recovery movements. By
joining her intellectual and political engagements with these
movements to her considerable skills as a dramatist, Gage creates
plays that bring the “magic” back to theatre. I have seen many of her
plays performed – among them, The Second Coming of Joan of Arc,
Sappho in Love, Harriet Tubman Visits A Therapist, and Artemisia
and Hildegarde. The impact of these performances on audiences is
profound and life-changing.

I can also attest to Carolyn Gage’s rapport with university students

and faculty… I sponsored a lecture and performance by Carolyn
Gage on our campus. These events were well-attended and
enthusiastically received by the faculty, students, and community
members who attended. Carolyn Gage was on my campus for four
days and throughout that time she was most generous in making
herself accessible to students. In the discussions with her audience
and during small group meetings with students, Carolyn was lively,
provocative, brilliant.”—Dr. Patricia Cramer, Dept. of English,
University of Connecticut, Stamford.

“Although she has worked in other literary genres, Carolyn’s genius

is best appreciated in her theatrical work as an author, performer, and
director. Whatever the subject, her work focuses on the lives of
women, situates them in their historical context, and illuminates their

vii
thoughts and actions from a feminist and, yes, lesbian perspective.
And although one might assume that her radical perspective would
ensure permanent obscurity for Carolyn’s work, this has not been the
case. Her plays continue to receive national and international
attention. Carolyn will bring not only her incredibly prolific theatrical
repertoire but also the richness of her intellect and astute political
comprehension of women’s lives and the necessity of our struggle—
of all people’s struggles—against the colonization of our minds and
bodies. She has a great gift and the ability to synthesize the truths of
women’s lives and to tell them without shrinking from their pain and
complexity.”—Julia Penelope, co-editor of The Original Coming
Out Stories, Lesbians Only, and Lesbian Culture: An Anthology.

“It was an excellent performance… I also wanted you to know that

your performance drew one of the largest audiences for a Women’s
Studies sponsored event. Many of us have continued to talk about
your performance for long after your departure from Gettysburg. We
especially enjoyed your warmth and your sense of humor.”—Joyce
Sprague, Women’s Studies, Gettysburg College, Gettysburg,
PA.

“[Carolyn Gage’s] workshop, sponsored by the Alliance for Sexual

Diversity, was both theatrical and theoretical. Her use of classical
female archetypes to describe ongoing issues facing women was
especially clear and powerful… She was entertaining and
empowering to many young women on our campus who, a month
later, are still talking about her.”—Naomi Paisley, Information and
Referral Counselor, Women’s Center, University of Southern
Maine.

“… a tremendous experience for the students. Ms. Gage made such

a positive impact on the students that her ‘voice’ can still be heard
echoing in the voices of the students who were fortunate enough to
have spent time with her.” —Carolyn Lewis, Professor of Theatre,
Cedar Crest College, Allentown, PA.

“We invited Carolyn Gage to perform her play, The Second Coming
of Joan of Arc here at UVA—she was amazing. She really challenges
women and men to rethink a whole range of issues, from popular
historical accounts of Joan’s story to how rape figures into the
oppression of women—and lesbians, specifically—throughout
history. She is a completely lovely person and easy to work with.” —
Claire N. Kaplan, Coordinator, Sexual Assault Education, Univ.
of Virginia.

viii
“… 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.

“I am constantly amazed at Carolyn’s ability to make complex social

issues not only accessible but also irresistibly fascinating.” —R.J.
McComish, Literary Manager of the Portland Stage Company,
Portland, Maine.

“Gage’s The Second Coming of Joan of Arc really is that—an entirely

fresh look at Joan. Who knew she had a lesbian lover, and her cross
dressing is what really got her in trouble?! Gage presents her as a
queer role model and hero for all ages—a fantastic and surprising
believable re-visioning of lesbian history.” —Marie Cartier,
performance artist and author, Baby, You Are My Religion and
founder, Dandelion Warrior Movement.

“No playwright has created as amazing a pantheon of historical

lesbian characters as Carolyn Gage. Her book, Monologues and
Scenes for Lesbian Actors, provides a sumptuous feast of
possibilities for both seasoned and budding lesbian performers to use
portraying a full range of emotion and political perspectives. Carolyn
Gage is a national lesbian treasure.” —Rosemary Keefe Curb,
editor of Amazon All Stars : 13 Lesbian Plays.

“I’ve long been intrigued and entertained by the originality of Carolyn

Gage’s work. Simply no one is writing about these subjects with such
insight and humor.” —Mariah Burton Nelson, author, We Are All
Athletes, international women’s sports authority.

“Rarely in my life have I left a play, or any work of art, feeling like my
life was truly better for it… The plays were hilarious, harrowing,
exhilarating, and affirming.” —The Spectrum, Buffalo, NY.

“Taking in a Gage play is like getting a combined dose of Karl Marx,

Betty Friedan and triple espresso. She broadcasts insight on power

ix
and powerlessness with energetic zip, laying good groundwork for
directors and actors who would attempt production of them.” —
WNYQ News, Buffalo, NY.

“… strong-minded, bighearted storytelling...” —Chicago Review,

Chicago.

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 BIOGRAPHY

Carolyn Gage is a playwright, performer, director, and activist.

The author of nine collections of lesbian and feminist themed
plays and eighty-three 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. Many of her plays
center on radical narratives for survivors of sexual violence.

In 2023, Gage made the national Kilroy List, a gender parity

initiative to end the “systematic underrepresentation of female
and trans playwrights” in the American theater industry. She
was also featured in the Dramatists Guild Magazine. 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

xi
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. (In
2019, Stigmata was a national finalist for the Jane Chambers
Award, but was withdrawn because it did not meet the
unpublished qualification.) She has written two volumes of
Monologues and Scenes for Lesbian Actors, as well as the
first academic manual for lesbian theatre production, Take
Stage! (Rowman & Littlefield).

Her work has been published in 40 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 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

xii
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 perform.

xiii
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

ONE-WOMAN SHOWS

THE SECOND COMING OF JOAN OF ARC........................................................... 1

Award-winning one-woman show. A lesbian Joan returns with an
impassioned message for contemporary audiences. An
electrifying evening of theatre. Show has toured internationally,
been featured on NPR, and received first-class production in
Brazil, where it grossed top box office in Rio and Sao Paolo.
LA SECONDE VENUE DE JEANNE D'ARC .......................................................... 2
A lively and contemporary French translation of The Second
Coming of Joan of Arc, by Céline Pomès.
ВТОРОТО ПРИШЕСТВИЕ HА ЖАНА Д’АРК ....................................................... 3
Bulgarian translation by Victoria Koleva of The Second Coming
of Joan of Arc.

贞德再临_中文 .................................................................................. 3
Mandarin translation by Chen San of The Second Coming of
Joan of Arc.
GIOVANNA D'ARC - LA RIVOLTA ......................................................................... 3
A lively and contemporary Italian translation of The Second
Coming of Joan of Arc, by Edy Quaggio.

THE LAST READING OF CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN .............................................. 3

Captivating evening with one of the greatest actresses of the
nineteenth century. Charlotte Cushman, a large butch woman,
made a name for herself in “breeches parts,” and treats the
audience to excerpts from her Hamlet, Romeo, and Cardinal
Wolsey—as well as scenes and other monologues from her
repertoire. National award for “best play about a lesbian historical
figure.”

CROSSING THE RAPELANDS ……………………………………. 5

This is personal memoir along the lines of a Spaulding Gray

monologue.. about the playwright’s experiences of hitchhiking

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 through America—specifically about hitchhiking from Boulder to
Los Angeles, to San Francisco and back with another woman in
the summer of 1973.

DRAMATIC ADAPTATIONS

AMY LOWELL: IN HER OWN WORDS .................................................................. 6

A platform reading by the famous Imagist herself, including the
erotic love poems written for her beloved partner Ada Dwyer. Also
includes diary entries, observations on writing poetry, rebuttals to
critics, and her passionate tribute to the actress Eleanora Duse.
DEEP HAVEN .......................................................................................................... 7
A dramatic adaptation of the lesbian writings of beloved 19th-
century New England writer Sarah Orne Jewett. Including
excerpts form her novels, diaries, letters, and poems. For two
(or four) women.
EXTRAVAGANT LOVE: THE LIFE OF VIOLETTE LEDUC ................................... 8
An avant-garde odyssey into the vivid and often terrifying world
of lesbian Parisian author Violette LeDuc. Play encompasses
themes of abortion, lesbian prostitution, self-hatred, and maternal
incest. Not for the faint-hearted!

BRETT REMEMBERS ............................................................................................. 9

A dramatic adaptation of the autobiographical writings of Taos
painter Dorothy Brett. In the play, 70-year-old Brett attempts to
gain closure with her Younger Self about her passionate
attachment to D.H. Lawrence during his New Mexico years. A
play for two women.
I HAVE COME TO SHOW YOU DEATH ............................................................... 10
Dramatic adaptations of the writings of four 19th-century, New
England lesbian writers, on the subject of lesbians and dying.
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Sarah Orne Jewett, Alice Brown, Mary
Wilkins Freeman.

xv
SPEAK FULLY THE ONE AWFUL WORD ........................................................... 11
Dramatic adaptation of Lady Byron Vindicated, Harriet Beecher
Stowe's courageous exposé of Lord Byron's incestuous
relationship with his sister and his abuse of Lady Byron.

EL BOBO ............................................................................................................... 11
A one-act adaptation of Anton Chekhov's short story "The Ninny."
A contemporary encounter between a wealthy employer and his
Latina housekeeper.

GEORGIA AND THE BUTCH ................................................................................ 12

A dramatic adaptation using excerpts from the letters between
Maria Chabot, a young, gender-non-conforming lesbian and the
renowned artist Georgia O'Keeffe. Who was the butch who took
Georgia O’Keeffe camping in the mountains of New Mexico, who
was her “handyman” (her words), who was her intimate friend for
nine years, and who was designer/general contractor/builder for
her internationally renowned house in Abiquiu—and who did it all
for love?

MUSICALS

THE AMAZON ALL-STARS .................................................................................. 14

A box office home run! Musical comedy about a lesbian softball
team with a player who is really out in left field. Fantasy
numbers include the Miss Butch Universe Pageant, a lesbian
Star Trek, and the lesbian World Series. Show has broken box
office records in three theatres! Full score and DVD available.
LEADING LADIES ................................................................................................. 16
Sparkling gem of a cabaret musical! Six leading ladies take
stage with musical numbers celebrating the turning points in
their respective careers. Cast includes Sarah Bernhardt,
Eleanora Duse, and Laurette Taylor. A special treat for theatre
lovers! Lead sheets and CD.

xvi
BABE! AN OLYMPIAN MUSICAL ........................................................................ 17
Big, brassy, full-cast mainstage musical about the greatest
woman athlete in history, Babe Didrikson! Babe’s struggle for
acceptance pits her against the standards of compulsory
heterosexuality. Numbers include a high school dance, a
choreographed women’s basketball game, and a pajama party
on the Olympic train. Lead sheets, CD, and DVD available.
WOMEN ON THE LAND ....................................................................................... 18
Small-cast lesbian musical about the culture clash between the
urban leather scene and the country dykes on a land collective
in Oregon. “Vampire Lesbians From Hell” meet the goddess
worshiper in a showdown of values on the night of Beltane.
Score currently not available.

HOW TO WRITE A COUNTRY-WESTERN SONG ............................................... 19

A five-woman “concert with a plot.” Two sets of lovers, both
former bandmates, struggle with recovery on the eve of a
concert. Show combines country-western, punk rock, hip hop,
gospel, and blues... using a concert stage for the set. CD
available.

FULL -LENGTH PLAYS

SAPPHO IN LOVE ................................................................................................. 22

A Lesbian midsummer night’s dream with the goddesses of
celibacy, love, and marriage competing for Sappho’s attention
amid poetry contests, meteor showers, lessons on lesbian
love-making, romantic trysting, mix-ups and disguises. Wet
and wild romantic comedy!
THE ANASTASIA TRIALS IN THE COURT OF WOMEN .................................... 24
A play with intense audience participation! Engrossing,
controversial courtroom drama, where the audience must serve
as judge and jury, deciding motions and verdict, in a case
against the five women who betrayed the Grand Duchess
Anastasia Romanov, the last surviving daughter of the Tsar of
Russia. Complex ethical questions on a set of folding chairs.

xvii
THE SPINDLE ........................................................................................................ 25
A children’s theatre play for adults! As thirteen-year old Doko
struggles to rescue her best friend the Princess Beauty from
the curse that says she will be pricked by a spindle before her
sixteenth birthday, the adults in the play grapple with the denial
and superstition that hold the kingdom in a tyrant’s thrall.
UGLY DUCKLINGS ............................................................................................... 27
Two counselors at a summer camp struggle with their love
against a backdrop of homophobia. Scenes with the campers
depict with chilling accuracy the cruelty of girls towards those
they perceive as outsiders. Powerful lesbian drama!
THANATRON ......................................................................................................... 29
This is a rollicking farce about the world’s most dysfunctional
family, a doctor with a penchant for assisted suicide, and a
lesbian housekeeper with a crush on her employer. An over-
the-top comedy about leaving, being left, and what it takes to
stay.
ESTHER AND VASHTI .......................................................................................... 30
A romantic drama set against a backdrop of war in ancient
Persia. A young Hebrew woman and her former lover, the
Queen of Persia, struggle against their personal and political
differences to form an alliance against a common enemy.
STIGMATA ............................................................................................................. 31
A tragedy in five-acts about the 16th century, Italian nun,
Benedetta Carlini, whose sexual relationship with another nun
became the subject of a trial by the Inquisition.
COMING ABOUT ................................................................................................... 33
Award-winning full-length drama about the disintegration of the
traditional roles in marriage between men and women. A
wedding in the country is hit by a hurricane figuratively and
literally, and the guests undergo a sea change.
THE GODDESS TOUR .......................................................................................... 33
It’s a dark and stormy night at a remote inn on the Burren of
Western Ireland, as six American women -- strangers to each
other (or are they?) -- gather for a tour of ancient goddess sites.
A murder mystery exploring potentially deadly mother-daughter

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 dyads, played out amid ghostly sightings of lost children and
pre-Celtic rituals involving various aspects of the goddess.

BLACK STAR ........................................................................................................ 35

In Black Star, the greatest African American classical actress
of the 19th Century, Henrietta Vinton Davis, wrestles with a
ghost who is calling into question her entire lifework.

IN MCCLINTOCK'S CORN ………………………………..……….. 36

The entire play is set in a cornfield. The play is about gender-
non-conforming geneticist Barbara McClintock and her
companion/partner Harriet Creighton, and McClintock’s
revolutionary quest to understand diversity in nature and to
reframe “deviance” as an expression of natural variance.

ONE-ACT PLAYS
MASON-DIXON ..................................................................................................... 38
Separated for thirty years, a white woman attempts to recruit
her former slave to return to the South to work as a Union spy
in the Confederate White House. Issues of race, class, and
gender explode as the women confront their lesbian girlhood
and shared history of sexual abuse.
JANE ADDAMS AND THE DEVIL BABY ............................................................. 39
Hull House, rumored to be sheltering a “devil baby,” is
besieged by emigrants clamoring to see the child with horns
and hooves. Jane Addams locks horns with an elderly Irish
woman, in an attempt to understand the strange obsession that
has gripped Chicago.
LOUISA MAY INCEST .......................................................................................... 39
The writing of Little Women is interrupted when the character
Jo March and her famous creator cannot agree on the ending.
The struggle for control of the book becomes deadly when Jo
accuses Louisa of repressed lesbian desires and incest
memories.
BATTERED ON BROADWAY ............................................................................... 40
Farcical romp that takes a backwards look at the misogyny of
Broadway’s musicals through the eyes of the characters
themselves... twenty years later!

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CALAMITY JANE SENDS A MESSAGE TO HER DAUGHTER........................... 41
Fifteen-minute comic monologue by the real Calamity Jane -
spittoon, whiskey, and all!
COOKIN’ WITH TYPHOID MARY.......................................................................... 42
Half-hour dramatic monologue by the notorious typhoid carrier
who refused to admit the existence of germs. Her side of the
story.
ARTEMISIA AND HILDEGARD ............................................................................. 42
Two of the most powerful women artists in history discuss their
work on an explosive arts panel about survival strategies for
women artists.
HARRIET TUBMAN VISITS A THERAPIST .......................................................... 44
Harriet Tubman, suspected of planning an escape, has been
sent to the therapist, another African-American woman, for an
evaluation. Radical activism meets one-day-at-a-time
therapism. Published by Samuel French, presented at
Louisville Juneteenth Festival, winner of Off-Off Broadway
Festival.
ENTR’ACTE ........................................................................................................... 45
Eva Le Gallienne has checked herself into a private hospital
the night she was raped backstage during her Broadway run of
Liliom. She has sent for her former girlfriend Mimsey, whom
she has not seen since Mimsey’s marriage ten months earlier.
A tour-de-force for a young actor, running a gamut of
dissociative states of a survivor of sexual abuse.
THE PARMACHENE BELLE ................................................................................. 46
“Fly Rod” Crosby, a lesbian Maine hunting guide from the late
19th century, shares secrets about fly-fishing as she indulges
in her romantic fantasies about her friend Annie Oakley.

THE PELE CHANT................................................................................................. 47

A ninety-two-year-old Native Hawaiian woman struggles with
the last request of her adoptive mother, Queen Liliuokalani, the
last queen of Hawai’i. Succeeding in her quest, she overturns
the paradigm of Western history, exposing its inherently
colonial agenda.

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THE DRUM LESSON ............................................................................................ 48
A one-act for five women drummers, in which much of the
dialogue is conveyed via the drumming.
THE RULES OF THE PLAYGROUND .................................................................. 49
Six mothers of middle-school children come together for a
special training on playground violence. Focusing on perfecting
the rules of the playground to eliminate inequality, the women,
literally, turn a blind eye to the real cause of violence. A chilling
interrogation into the ways women teach each other to enable
male violence.
THE EVIL THAT MEN DO: THE STORY OF THALIDOMIDE .............................. 51
Fast-paced radio drama, suitable for stage production. The
conspiracy of the German drug manufacturers and the FDA
unfolds like a murder mystery, as Dr. Frances Kelsey,
suspecting birth defects, stalls for time against mounting
pressures to license sale of “the sleeping pill of the century.”
A LABOR PLAY .................................................................................................... 52
Kafka-esque one-act about a multi-national corporation in the
business of selling babies. “Business as usual” comes to a halt
when one of the workers strikes for control of the distribution of
manufactured goods. In other words, she wants to keep the
baby.
HETEROSEXUALS ANONYMOUS....................................................................... 53
A playful send-up of the 12-step movement. Five women in
recovery from their addictions to men, convene at their weekly
meeting. The format includes personal testimonies and the
reading of the 12 Steps of HA.
RADICALS ............................................................................................................. 53
A one-act about the women in the anti-war movement of the
Sixties. Sexual tensions fuse with political agendas, as the
women cross mine fields of repressed emotion, and the action
builds to a violent climax, as the war comes home.
THE BOUNDARY TRIAL OF JOHN PROCTOR ................................................... 54
A one-act featuring the notorious anti-hero of Arthur Miller’s
Crucible, and the women he exploited. John Proctor, finding
himself in the boundary lands of patriarchy after his execution,
encounters a second trial—this time by the women. Proctor,

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 who does not believe in witches, scrambles desperately for
context as he is tested by his ex-wife, his mistress, a formerly
enslaved Caribbean woman, the town baglady, the town
bluestocking, and the town matriarch.
THE LADIES’ ROOM ............................................................................................. 55
A five-minute play about two lesbian teenagers in a ladies'
room at a shopping mall. The butch has just been mistaken for
a man, and mall security is on the way. Her girlfriend, because
of her own history,is conflicted about offering support.
PATRICIDE ............................................................................................................ 55
A one-minute monologue by a woman of any age, ethnicity,
race, orientation, physical ability, class background—in which
she telephones and confronts her father on incest.
THE P.E. TEACHER .............................................................................................. 56
A one-act about misogyny, racism, and homophobia in the
schools. A new teacher is hired to replace a lesbian teacher
who resigned under suspicious circumstances. When a former
lover turns up on staff, it becomes evident that the
scapegoating is a cover for the school’s institutionalized
violence against women and girls.
BITE MY THUMB ................................................................................................... 56
A “skirmish in one-act.” Two “gangs” from contemporary rival
productions of Romeo and Juliet meet in an Off-Off Broadway
alley to rumble, sixteenth-century style. Lots of cross-dressed
knee-flexing and gender-bending!
THE POORLY-WRITTEN PLAY FESTIVAL .......................................................... 57
Just possibly the worst one-act play ever written! A committee
of play readers meet in the Green Room to select the plays for
a Festival of Poorly-Written Plays. In the course of the meeting,
they violate every tenet of good playwriting in a kind of “Actor’s
Nightmare” for playwrights. Riotously funny.
THE OBLIGATORY SCENE .................................................................................. 58
Ostensibly arguing about The Taming of the Shrew, a lesbian
couple come to grips with their own marital struggles around
the issue of sex.

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THE GAGE AND MR. COMSTOCK ...................................................................... 59
A monologue by feminist foremother and Suffragist, Matilda
Joslyn Gage, in which she sets the bait for Anthony Comstock
to ban her book, Woman, Church and State, a comprehensive
exposé of the historical misogyny of the christian church.
‘TIL THE FAT LADY SINGS .................................................................................. 61
A play with music for two women in one-act. A fat woman in her
20’s is in the hospital awaiting surgery for a gastric bypass
operation she believes necessary for her dream of singing
opera professionally. Her partner is against the surgery, and as
the patient goes under sedation, she finds herself and her
partner in a series of bizarre dreams where her situation
incorporates elements of operas by Wagner, Gluck, Verdi,
Mozart, and Puccini.
THE A-MAZING YAMASHITA AND THE MILLENNIAL GOLDDIGGERS. .......... 62
“The transnational, postmodern magic show of the millennia!”
The A-Mazing Yamashita promises to levitate a woman, cut a
woman in two, and disappear a hundred thousand women—all
through the wizardry of modern pharmaceuticals, the presto-
chango of sexual com-modification, and the wonders of the
Great Cabinet of GATT.
THE COUNTESS AND THE LESBIANS ............................................................... 63
Three lesbian actors are rehearsing an historical play about
Countess Markiewicz and the aftermath of her participation in
the Easter Week Rising in Dublin. The play is about her political
differences with her sister, who was a pacifist. As the women
take up the issues of the play, the power dynamics of their own
lesbian relationships are called into question.
SOUVENIRS FROM EDEN ................................................................................... 65
The ghost of lesbian poet Renée Vivien returns to a pivotal
memory from the summer of 1900, when she was in Bar Harbor
(“Eden”), Maine, with her lover Natalie Barney. She wrestles
with scenarios of traumatic memories in an attempt to find
closure.
BLACK EYE .......................................................................................................... 66
Subtitled “a knockout in nine minutes,” this short play packs a
punch. The year is 1953, and Amanda is a 13-year-old tomboy
who has been sent to the principal’s office for fighting the boys

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 who have been lesbian-baiting her. When the principal, who is
in the closet, moves to expel her, Amanda’s lesbian P.E.
teacher shows that she is just as willing to fight as her student.
A taut play, filled with surprises.
HERMENEUTIC CIRCLEJERK ............................................................................. 67
A farcical satire on the founding of postmodernism by two
philosophers with a public history of pro-pedophilia activism. Is
the “deconstruction of childhood” a coincidental by-product of
of post-structural theory, or something more sinister: the raison
d'être of a pernicioius philosophy?
LACE CURTAIN IRISH .......................................................................................... 68
Thirty-five years after the infamous Fall River ax murders, an
Irish woman, working in her kitchen in Anaconda, Montana,
opens a newspaper to read about the death of the alleged
murderer, Lizzie Borden. The woman is Bridget Sullivan, the
Borden's former maid. A gripping solo one-act that turns history
on its head!

THE GREATEST ACTRESS WHO EVER LIVED.................................................. 69

A closeted reporter arrives in the dressing room of veteran,
bisexual stage and film star Nance O'Neil, and as Nance
shares the details of her affair with alleged ax murderess Lizzie
Borden, the two women share a moment of intimacy.
LITTLE SISTER...................................................................................................... 70
A tribal police officer struggles with her lesbian partner over
issues of loyalty and definitions of "family" and "tribe."

THE GREAT FIRE………..……………………………………………70

Two sisters and their brother wait for rescue by boat on the
beach of Bar Harbor, as the Great Fire of 1947 destroys the
entire town. The former chambermaid provides a key to escape
from the apocalyptic scenario. A ten-minute play.

THE CLARITY OF PIZZA….…………………………………………71

A lesbian and her heterosexual best friend get into a fight over
a guy while eating pizza.

VALERIE SOLANAS AT MATTEAWAN..…………………………72

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 Two pioneering activists in the budding Women's Liberation
Movement visit Valerie Solanas at the Matteawan State
Hospital for the Criminally Insane. It has only been two months
since she shot Andy Warhol. They are on a mission to recruit
her as a spokeswoman for their movement. Valerie has other
things on her mind...

PLANCHETTE..………………………………….……………………72

During a nor'easter on the New Hampshire coast, in 1879, two

thirteen-year-olds share their secrets about trauma they have
survived and the deeper secrets about their sexual orientations
and gender identities.

HEAD IN THE GAME..………………………….……………………73

A persuasive case for abolishing prostitution. In the Boxing Girl

Gym, the clients pay by the hour to "work out" with "sparring
partners." The "sparring partners" paid to let the client win,
which means they don't punch back. Perfectly legal variation of
a popular recreation... no?

AT SEA..…………………………………..…….……………………74

Two lesbian buddies in their 80’s have escaped from a nursing

home at night, stolen a sailboat, and are planning a double
suicide out on the ocean. At Sea is a fleeting (no pun intended)
celebration of lesbian friendship, sailing, marijuana, and
resistance.

EASTER SUNDAY..………………………..…….……………………74

The year is 1960. The park is Morningside. The day is Easter.

A play about love and drinking, and class differences between
lesbians. A story of resurrection.

52 PICKUP..……………………..…….………………………………76

Janiya, a young woman is in the hospital on a mandatory

suicide watch after her third attempt. She is visited by her ex-
girlfriend Cil. As they both struggle with the aftermath of the
attempt, the two women arrive at a dynamic that might be a
game-changer.

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LIGHTING MARTHA ..……………..…….……………………….…76

A one-act about the lesbian relationship between legendary

lighting designer Jean Rosenthal and her assistant Miki
(Marion) Kinsella. The play opens in April 1969, after the final
dress rehearsal for Martha Graham’s 35th season opener at
the City Center. Legendary lighting designer Jean Rosenthal,
dying of cancer, arrived in an ambulance and on a gurney for
the final lighting check. The play is a reflection on denial and
dying, intimacy and artists, seeing and being seen, and—of
course—on light.

MiSS LE GALLIENNE ANNOUNCES THE NEW SEASON. ……77

A 10-minute monologue. Actress Eva Le Gallienne faces her

first press conference after the fire that almost killed her and
the scandal of her girlfriend's divorce.

FEMALE NUDE SEATED ……………………………………………77

Two Irish art students, Mainie Jellett and Evie Hone, meet in a
student rooming house in London, late one night in 1917. Both
of them are at dramatic turning points in their lives… turning
points that will change the history of art in Ireland.

ON THE OTHER HAND ……………………………...….……………78

Two sock puppets begin to sense the presence of other beings-

-beings who are controlling their thoughts and their actions. As
they become more and more aware, their situation with the
Puppeteers becomes more and more perilous. A rigorous
morality tale for modern times.

THE INTIMACY COORDINATOR…………………...….……………79

A short play about what happens when an intimacy coordinator

interrupts an appointment between a prostituted woman and
her client.

STARPATTERN………………….............................….……………80

A play about two extraordinarily courageous young women who

survived the 1966 mass shooting on the University of Texas at
Austin.

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BRETT HEARS THE MOUNTAIN GODS……............….…………81

Taos painter Dorothy Brett, 73, breaks her silence about her
trip to Italy with D.H. Lawrence and the two traumatic nights
when he attempted to make love to her. Shattered by his
rejection of her, Brett remembers how, returning alone to Taos,
she was healed by the wisdom and the values of the indigenous
people around her.

THE ANNUNCIATION TO MARY……....................….……………81

Two graduating seniors meet to rehearse the annual Christmas

pageant at their all-girls’ prep school. One girl has been
recently diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum, and she
starts a fight that will allow her some control over the end of the
friendship.

BOOKS

THE SECOND COMING OF JOAN OF ARC AND SELECTED PLAYS [2009] ... 83
A new collection of Gage’s one- and two-woman plays,
including The Second Coming of Joan of Arc, The Last
Reading of Charlotte Cushman, The Parmachene Belle,
Calamity Jane Sends a Message to Her Daughter, Cookin’ with
Typhoid Mary, Harriet Tubman Visits A Therapist, Artemisia
and Hildegard.
NINE SHORT PLAYS ............................................................................................ 84
A collection of Gage’s best short plays: The Obligatory Scene,
Bite My Thumb, The Rules of the Playground, The Pele Chant,
Patricide, Entr’acte or The Night Eva Le Gallienne Was Raped,
Jane Addams and the Devil Baby, Louisa May Incest, and
Battered on Broadway.
THREE COMEDIES ............................................................................................... 85
A collection of three award-winning, full-length comedies: The
Anastasia Trials in the Court of Women, Sappho in Love, and
Thanatron.

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THE TRIPLE GODDESS ........................................................................................ 86
A collection of three full-length dramas: The Goddess Tour,
Ugly Ducklings, and Esther and Vashti.
BLACK EYE AND OTHER SHORT PLAYS .......................................................... 86
A collection of ten short plays: Black Eye, The Ladies Room,
Conversation on a Strange Planet, The A-Mazing Yamashita
and the Millennial Gold Diggers, The Rules of the Playground,
The Boundary Trial of John Proctor, The Evil That Men Do: The
Story of Thalidomide, A Labor Play, Heterosexuals
Anonymous, The P.E. Teacher, The Gage and Mr. Comstock.
TAKE STAGE! ....................................................................................................... 88
A complete manual for the lesbian who wants to produce or
direct lesbian theatre. Everything you need to know from
selecting the script to striking the set. Chapters on money, on
organizing volunteers, on multi-culturalism, on publicity, on
rehearsing. Written with the values and needs of our
community in mind. An invaluable resource for every amateur
theatre!

SCENES AND MONOLOGUES FOR LESBIAN ACTORS: REVISED AND

EXPANDED ............................................................................................................ 90
The first ever scene and monologue book written for lesbian
actors! Over thirty-two monologues and over sixty scenes from
twenty of Gage’s most popular plays.. Some of the roles are
written specifically for African American, Hispanic, Latina, and
Anglo actors, but most are not specific for race or ethnicity.

STARTING FROM ZERO ....................................................................................... 92

A collection of historical one-act plays about lesbians in love.

LIKE THERE’S NO TOMORROW ......................................................................... 93

A feminist meditation book written with a light touch, but a deep
politic. In the words of feminist philosopher Mary Daly, “ It is a
work of burning, uncompromising vision and daring... a beacon
of hope in these chilling times of compromise, timidity and
apparent defeat. This book is Pure Fire.”

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THE GAIA PAPERS .............................................................................................. 94
The Gaia Papers explore the age-old question of evil through
a lens of radical feminist metaphysics, applying principles of
a radical spirituality to challenge the reality of gendered
violence.

13 PROPOSITIONS FOR REWIRING THE LESBIAN BRAIN.............................. 95

A thirty-six page booklet that is an "electricians manual" for
reprogramming key concepts about human relationships.

SERMONS FOR A LESBIAN TENT REVIVAL ..................................................... 96

Thirteen of “Sister Carolyn’s” most popular sermons from her
notoriously funny, radically feminist Lesbian Tent Revival.
SUPPLEMENTAL SERMONS FOR A LESBIAN TENT REVIVAL………………..98
Thirteen of “Sister Carolyn’s” most popular sermons from her
notoriously funny
HOTTER THAN HELL ........................................................................................... 98
More sermons from the Lesbian Tent Revival.
BIRTH OF A LESBIAN .......................................................................................... 98
A “science fiction autobiography” in which the author creates a
parable for understanding her childhood experiences.

THE VERY SHORT PLAYS ................................................................................... 98

A collection of Carolyn Gage's one-act plays, all running under
fifteen minutes in length.

MORE MONOLOGUES AND SCENES FOR LESBIAN ACTORS ....................... 98

Gage's second volume of feminist and/or lesbian-themed
scenes and monologues. Many of the roles feature gender non-
conforming characters. Eighteen monologues and twenty-six
scenes.
SERMONS FOR A HOT KITCHEN FROM THE LESBIAN TENT REVIVAL ........ 99
The fourth volume of sermons from the fierce and hilarious
Lesbian Tent Revival. "Sister Carolyn" delivers her fiery
messages on a range of subjects, from prostitution to jealousy,

xxix
 dying well to holding contradiction. Sixteen of her latest
sermons.

THE ISLAND COLLECTION: NEW PLAYS .......................................................... 99

The fourth volume of sermons from the fierce and hilarious
Lesbian Tent Revival. "Sister Carolyn" delivers her fiery
messages on a range of subjects, from prostitution to jealousy,
dying well to holding contradiction. Sixteen of her latest
sermons.

BIG PLAYS .......................................................................................................... 100

Three full-length plays by Carolyn Gage, including In
McClintock’s Corn, Stigmata, and The Spindle. Plays with large
casts, universal themes, multiple subplots and scenes, epic
sweeps of history, breathtaking relevance with heart-stopping
suspense and momentum.

AXED!................................................................................................................... 100
Two one-act plays that deal with Lizzie Borden and the Fall
River ax murders: Lace Curtain Irish and The Greatest Actress
Who Ever Lived.

THE ABOLITION PLAYS ..................................................................................... 100

Two one-act plays that deal with prostitution, including Head in
the Game and The Intimacy Coordinator.

THE DELILAH JOURNAL.................................................................................... 100

Playwright Carolyn Gage shares her reflections on being
diagnosed as autistic at the age of 68. “Delilah” is an acronym
for "diagnosed extremely late in life as autistic."

ADAPTATIONS

A WOMAN’S BOOK OF HEALING ..................................................................... 102

An adaption of the Christian Science textbook, Science and
Health with Key to the Scriptures, for use by those who are
seeking a metaphysical system of healing with an emphasis

xxx
 on right relation and connection with the natural world, where
a higher power is metaphorically referenced as female.

CD’s AND DVD’S

THE SECOND COMING OF JOAN OF ARC [CD].............................................. 103

An audio recording of Gage’s performance in her lesbian
classic, at the Institute of Musical Arts in Bodega, California.

UGLY DUCKLINGS: THE DOCUMENTARY [DVD] ........................................... 103

Documentary film produced by Hardy Girls Healthy Women,
based on Gage’s play Ugly Ducklings. Film contains excerpts
from the play, with interviews by members of the cast. Project
designed to prevent LGBT youth suicide and bullying.

THE LESBIAN TENT REVIVAL RADIO HOUR PODCASTS………………….….103

Twenty-one podcast “sermons” from the Lesbian Tent Revival
Radio Hour, all on one DVD! Hilarious, lesbian-feminist, rabble-
rousing!

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xxxii
 ONE-WOMAN PLAYS

THE SECOND COMING OF JOAN OF ARC

A One-Woman Play

“… unparalleled, far superior to George Bernard Shaw’s... The

Second Coming of Joan of Arc is high art and revolutionary
theatre combined.”—Phyllis Chesler, author of Women and
Madness and Mothers on Trial.

“Joan of Arc has never been made more real to me, not in the
movies, not on stage. This is the woman, not the myth…
Brava!”—Z. Budapest, author of The Grandmother of Time.

“… passion, humor, rage, insight, regret… This play works on

many levels - layers and layers and layers… a highly intelligent
piece of work which always remains accessible… an emotional,
moving, exciting experience...” —From the Flames, Nottingham,
England.

“… passionate, witty. Let this Joan be one of your voices.” —

Feminist Bookstore News, San Francisco.

“… gripping re-exploration of a legendary figure…” —Sing Out!

“… a tour de force performance by US writer/actor Carolyn

Gage. Here the true story of Jeanne Romée, the young peasant
girl who liberated France, is brought to us in a contemporary
setting, to explore how 500 years later things have changed for
women in society. It is a flawless performance, delivered with
passion, indignation, some humour, connection, opinion and
power...” —Gay Community News, Ireland.

“Carolyn Gage is a powerful writer who comprehends her

character… exhilarating… held my attention fully.” —We the
People, Santa Rosa, CA.

“… wickedly funny and devastatingly on target...” —Women’s

Voices, Santa Rosa, CA.

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“… a girl-power epic… Gage is at her best here, as almost every
line is scorchingly insightful.” —The Spectrum, Buffalo, NY.

Joan of Arc led an army to victory at seventeen. At eighteen, she

arranged the coronation of a king. At nineteen, she went up against
the entire Catholic church… and lost. Her trial lasted five months, and
the testimony by witnesses was carefully transcribed by notaries.
Twenty years after her death, a new trial was authorized, and again
detailed records were kept. There was testimony by her childhood
playmates, by her parents, by the women who slept with her, by the
soldiers who served under her, by the priests who confessed her, by
those who witnessed and administered her torture. She is the most
thoroughly documented figure of the fifteenth century. So why do the
myths about the simpleminded peasant girl, the pious virgin, still
pervade the history books?

Joan was anorectic. She was a teenage runaway. She had an

incestuous, alcoholic father. She loved women. She died for her right
to wear men’s clothing. She was defiant, irreverent, more clever than
her judges, unrepentant, and unfailingly true to her own visions.

In The Second Coming of Joan of Arc, Joan returns to share her story
with contemporary women. She tells her experiences with the highest
levels of church, state, and military, and unmasks the brutal misogyny
behind male institutions.

One woman
70 minutes (90 w/intermission)
Single set

LA SECONDE VENUE DE JEANNE D’ARC

A French Translation

A lively and contemporary translation of The Second Coming of

Joan of Arc, by Céline Pomès..

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 ВТОРОТО ПРИШЕСТВИЕ HА ЖАНА Д’АРК

Bulgarian translation by Victoria Koleva of The Second Coming of

Joan of Arc.

GIOVANNA D’ARC – LA RIVOLTA

Lively and contemporary Italian translation by Edy Quaggio of The

Second Coming of Joan of Arc.

贞德再临_中文

Mandarin translation by Chen San of The Second Coming of Joan

of Arc.

THE LAST READING OF CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN

A One-Woman Show

“A tour de force… Magnificent… beautifully crafted script...”—

Advertiser, Adelaide, Australia.

“Electrifying… enormously entertaining, absorbing, and brutally

honest… Anger, pride, frustration, flair, narcissism, nastiness,
grandeur, passion, indomitable skill, jealousy, razor-edged
revenge and ultimately heart...” —Sunday Mail, Adelaide,
Australia.

“I almost never review something that a viewer can't see – such

a show that's played only a few performances and closed. There
are exceptions, however. Last week, at the Marigny Theater, I
saw a one-woman show, The Last Reading of Charlotte
Cushman, that is simply extraordinary… moving, poignant,
terribly theatrical and funny as hell… superbly structured… a
showcase for a strong, dynamic actress…”—David Cuthbert,
WYES-TV, PBS affiliate station, New Orleans.

3
“Never have I heard such raves from so many of our festi-
goers… clearly the highlight of the… National Women’s Music
Festival!”—-Mary Byrne, producer National Women’s Music
Festival, Bloomington.

“… nearly flawless in its appeal and execution… [Gage’s]

Charlotte brought an appetite to the audience they didn’t even
know they had… the audience reluctantly left the theatre...” —
The Slant, Marin County, CA.

“… flawless… a smashing performance...”—We the People,

Sonoma County, CA.

“… unabashedly lesbian, unabashedly theatrical...”—The Maui

News, HI.

The Last Reading of Charlotte Cushman is a moving one-woman

show about the greatest American actress of the nineteenth century.
Charlotte Cushman, a large butch woman, was very “out” about her
lesbianism, cross-dressing to play men’s roles and referring to her
partner as “my wife.”

The play opens with an announcement that the performance will be

canceled, but Charlotte, outraged that such a decision has been
made without consulting her, charges on to countermand the order.
Cushman, struggling desperately against breast cancer, insists on
performing—and, taking up the challenge of her condition, devotes
the evening to the subject of death in the theatre. Having played many
roles which require dying, Charlotte regales the audience with
moving—and sometimes hilarious—scenes from Macbeth, Hamlet,
Oliver Twist, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Henry VIII, and the
notoriously bad melodrama, Guy Mannering.

Interspersed with her monologues are anecdotes about other actors,

her family, and about the romantic intrigues of the lesbian community
of American emigrees who were living in Rome in the mid-1800’s.
This community included Harriet Hosmer and Emma Stebbins, both
sculptors of international reputation.

At the opening of the second act, Charlotte shares with us an unusual

bet she has made with her lover, who is watching from the wings.
Later, as she performs her most famous “breeches part,” the role of

4
Romeo, the play takes a surprising turn to reveal the woman behind
the mask.

The Last Reading of Charlotte Cushman is a treat for lesbians, for

women’s history students, for theatre history buffs, and for fans of
Shakespeare! But it is Charlotte Cushman’s profoundly human
struggle against a terminal illness which makes the play an
unforgettable experience.

One woman (plus one very brief walk-on part)

90 minutes
Single set (platform reading)

CROSSING THE RAPELANDS

A One-Woman Show
This is a travelogue along the lines of the work of Spalding Gray,
about the playwright’s experiences of hitchhiking through America in
the early 1970's—specifically about hitchhiking from Boulder to Los
Angeles, to San Francisco and back with another woman in the
summer of 1973. Gage incorporates the tales of other women
crossing the "Rapelands" of the West: Sacajawea, Janis Joplin,
Thelma and Louise, and the Women of the Oregon Trail.

5
 DRAMATIC ADAPTATIONS

AMY LOWELL: IN HER OWN WORDS

A Reading

This is a poetry reading by the famous Imagist poet herself. The

reading is interlaced with tormented confessions from Lowell’s diary
as a teenager, observations on the art of writing poetry, her version
of the historic rupture with Ezra Pound, witty rebuttals to her critics,
and her notorious demonstration of how to unwrap a cigar as if one
were undressing a woman!

More than half the evening is given to the actual reading of Lowell’s
works, including her poem “The Sisters,” about Sappho, Elizabeth
Barrett Browning, and Emily Dickinson; “A Fairy Tale,” an expose of
her fall from grace as a child when she realized the fate in store for
an “ugly, fat” girl; “The Bath,” her aggressive and sensuous
celebration of her body and its pleasures; and many of the erotic love
poems written to her partner, the actress Ada Dwyer.

Lowell, who did not begin her life work until she was almost forty,
waged a tactically brilliant, militant campaign against fat phobia,
against ageism, and against the stereotypes of passive female
sexuality and sentimental artistic expression. She paid a high price
for her rebellion, however, and after her death, her many enemies
saw to it that she was treated patronizingly, if at all, in the historical
record.

Not a play in the traditional sense, Amy Lowell: In Her Own Words is
nonetheless a compelling piece of living history, as well as a
stimulating evening of lesbian poetry. Where biographers and critical
essayists have attempted to consider Lowell on a continuum with the
other two poets (both males) of her famous family—or to locate her
among the lesser poets of her day, this theatre piece places her
squarely in the tradition of pagan lesbian artists, a tradition with which
Lowell strongly identified in both her life and in her work.

One woman
60 minutes
Single set (platform reading)

6
 DEEP HAVEN
A Dramatic Adaptation

Deep Haven takes the audience through the life of 19th century Maine
writer Sarah Orne Jewett, beginning with her tomboy childhood and
ending with her touching final communications with her life partner
Annie Fields.

The text of the play is adapted from Jewett’s novels and letters, as
well as from the poems and diary entries of her juvenilia.

Apparently, Jewett’s father, a country doctor, identified that his

daughter, from a very early age, was destined for a different life than
the traditional New England wife and mother. He consciously set out
to prepare her for an independent life, and in the play, Jewett shares
his theories about rearing a gender-deviant daughter in citing A
Country Doctor.

Jewett’s frustrated love affairs with young women are chronicled in

the empassioned poems she writes, attempting to persuade them to
stay to true to her. In fact, their abandonment of her in favor of
heterosexual marriage was probably less about fickleness of heart
and more about wanting children as well as economic security.

It was not until Jewett met Annie Fields, a widower and philanthropist,
that she found her love and her longing for security reciprocated.
Seeking approval for their unorthodox union, both women attended
séances to communicate with the spirits of Jewett’s dead father and
Fields’ dead husband.

This was the era of the Boston Marriage, before the sexologists of the
next century would begin to pathologize same-sex orientation. The
openness and sweetness of the two women’s letters testifies to an
era more tolerant than the twentieth century. This contrast is
foreshadowed by lesbian novelist Willa Cather’s exchanges with
Jewett toward the end of Jewett’s life. Jewett challenged Cather, a
rising novelist, about her needing to adopt a male voice for her
narration.

Cather, speaking for a new generation of lesbians who will be called

“inverts” by the sexologists and treated like freaks of nature,
responds, “It’s always hard to write about the things that are near to
your heart, from a kind of instinct of self-preservation you distrust

7
them and disguise them.”

Illuminating the lesbian challenges and joys of her life, Deep Haven
pays tribute to the deeply matriarchal and woman-loving stories and
novels of one of Maine’s most beloved daughters.

Four women (can be done with two)

Single set
30 minutes

EXTRAVAGANT LOVE: THE LIFE OF VIOLETTE LEDUC

A Dramatic Adaptation

Extravagant Love is the story of Parisian writer Violette LeDuc.

Using narrative excerpts from LeDuc’s works, the play tells a

passionate story of a lesbian struggling with her disturbing memories
of a narcissistic, incestuous mother whom she both adored and
hated. Against a backdrop of Parisian fashion salons, decadent
hotels, and garish street carnivals, LeDuc unfolds her story of her
search for female autonomy.

In the first act, LeDuc reenacts her obsession with Parisian high
fashion—an obsession complicated by her strong identification with
the male gender. She relives an episode of shoplifting, as well as the
horrifying betrayal of her lesbian lover by an act of prostitution.

In the second act, LeDuc takes us back to her first lesbian experience
in a girls’ dormitory of a Parisian boarding school. This scene was
fictionalized in her lesbian erotic novel, Therese and Isabelle, and in
the ‘60’s became the basis of an erotic film of the same name.

LeDuc narrates in dramatic tableaux the events surrounding her

illegal abortion, and in doing so, she uncovers the primal trauma
behind her gender confusion and misogyny: child sexual abuse at the
hands of her mother.

Breaking the silence about one of society’s deepest taboos,

Extravagant Love takes its audiences on an unforgettable odyssey
into a lesbian world of passionate tenderness and devastating
betrayal.

8
Production rights must be negotiated individually with the agent for
the author’s estate.

One woman
One hour
Single set

BRETT REMEMBERS

A Dramatic Adaptation
In this play, Taos painter Dorothy Brett, 73, is entertaining us in her
1956 studio, when her reminiscences are interrupted by the ghost of
her younger self as she was in 1924, when she first accompanied
D.H. Lawrence and his wife Frieda to New Mexico with the plan of
establishing a spiritual and artistic community.

“Younger Brett” is hopelessly and obsessively in love with Lawrence,

and her soliloquies are addressed to the object of her adoration. She
continually attempts to uncover the mysterious painting on the easel,
which is a copy of a painting Brett destroyed thirty years earlier.

Brett’s memories include the “Bloomsberries” who gathered

themselves at the estate of Lady Ottoline Morrell during World War I,
as well as Tony and Mabel Dodge Luhan, at whose invitation the
Lawrences had come to New Mexico. She shares more personal
memories of her adult-onset deafness and the incident of childhood
sexual molestation to which she attributes her lifelong sexual
reticence.

Younger Brett continues to interrupt the narrative with her more

immediate and emotionally raw memories of Lawrence during the
years at the Ranch.

Finally Brett breaks her silence about the tragic night when Lawrence
attempted unsuccessfully to make love to her. This memory unveils
the mystery of the painting, and Brett is finally able to make peace
with herself, inviting the Younger Brett to collaborate on the finishing
of the painting.

2 woman

9
50 minutes
Single set

I HAVE COME TO SHOW YOU DEATH

Scenes on Lesbians and Dying by 19th Century, New

England Women Writers

I Have Come to Show You Death is collection of dramatic

adaptations of works by four 19th century New England writers, all of
whom appear to have been in Boston Marriages and whose writings
celebrate intimacy between women and negative appraisals of the
effects of heterosexual marriage on women.

Three are adaptations of short stories dealing with the death of a

lesbian life partner. The fourth adaptation is taken from a novel, and
it explores the meaning of life for two young lesbians.

Two Friends by Mary Wilkins Freeman. The impending death of

one woman drives her partner into desperate denial and the
confession of an old betrayal.

Since I Died by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps. A woman who has

recently died attempts and fails to communicate with her lesbian life
partner, who is unable to see her.

There and Here by Alice Brown. A woman receives a ghostly

visitation from her former beloved companion, and together they
revisit scenes from their childhood. At dawn she receives news that
her friend has died overseas.

Scene from Deephaven by Sarah Orne Jewett. Two young women,

ending their summer of independence in a Maine fishing village,
share an intimate evening, musing on the mystery of life.

Five women: Two young, three middle-aged

Multiple sets
60 minutes.

10
 SPEAK FULLY THE ONE AWFUL WORD

A Dramatic Adaptation of Lady Byron Vindicated by

Harriet Beecher Stowe

That “one awful word” was “incest,” and Harriet Beecher Stowe was
referring to Lord Byron’s incestuous relations with his half-sister, as
witnessed by Byron’s wife.

Late in her life, Stowe had befriended Annabella Byron, a woman with
a lively interest in social justice, including abolition, who engaged in
many philanthropic pursuits. During one of their visits, Lady Byron
shared the story of her traumatic engagement, honeymoon, and brief
marital co-habitation with the infamous poet. After Lady Byron’s death
and the publication of a memoir by Byron’s last mistress, Stowe
published a rebuttal to the slanderous attacks on her friend, as well
as the details of Byron’s abuses. Stowe was as vilified for writing this
book as she had been lionized for writing Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

By 1870, Lord Byron was a romantic and literary icon on two

continents, and the myth of the frigid and puritanical wife who had
abandoned this martyred genius was an essential part of the
legend. Speak Fully the One Awful Word is a one-woman dramatic
adaptation that captures the passion of Stowe in defending her friend,
as well as her radical framing of incest as an oppression, and
domestic violence as a human rights violation. She specifically
repudiated the prevailing Christian ethos that encouraged wives to
suffer in silence for the sake of protecting the family.

Stowe’s courage in confronting incest, and her willingness to sacrifice

her own reputation to defend that of a dead friend, shine like beacons
on a world that still invests in doctrines of “false memory syndrome.”

2 women, 1 man
Single Set
40 minutes

EL BOBO
A One-Act Adaptation of Chekhov’s “The Ninny”

A wealthy employer tells us he is going to conduct a little experiment

with the Latina woman who cleans his home. He calls her into his

11
office for an interview, during which, he makes increasingly absurd
excuses for docking her pay. She responds with stoicism. Finally, he
explodes... berating her for her failure to stand up for herself. He pays
her the full wages, she thanks him and exits. The employer then turns
to the audience to extemporize on his theme of what a "ninny" she
was. Suddenly, the voice of Julietta is heard off-stage, threatening to
shoot him. She orders him to put his head down on the desk and then
put his wallet, cell phone, and watch on the desk. Then she orders
him to say "Gracias." He complies, and she says, "Just kidding. No
gun..." She then reprises his lecture on spinelessness, only in
Spanish. She turns to leave, turns back and yells "Head down" and
then exits laughing. ... She exits, laughing: "Que bobo!"

10 minutes
1 white male, 1 Latina female
Single set

GEORGIA AND THE BUTCH

Adapted from Maria Chabot--Georgia O'Keeffe:
Correspondence, 1941-1949

This is an adaptation of excerpts from the decade-long

correspondence between two extraordinary women. One of them, the
artist Georgia O’Keeffe, is internationally acclaimed for her large
flower paintings, as well as her New Mexico landscapes and her
paintings of bleached animal bones. The other woman, Maria Chabot,
is honored locally for her revival of the Santa Fe Indian Market, and
for her design and oversight of the construction of O’Keeffe’s home
in Abiquiu.

When the two women met in 1939, Maria was twenty-five and
Georgia was fifty-two. Georgia had just bought a house in Ghost
Ranch outside of Taos, New Mexico. She would spend her winters in
Manhattan with her husband Alfred Stieglitz, and her summers in
New Mexico. In the early years of the friendship, Maria worked as a
“handyman” (her words) and seasonal property manager. In addition,
she organized the camping trips, where she would accompany
Georgia on plein-air painting excursions. In 1944, Georgia purchased
an adobe ruin of a hacienda in Abiquiu, and, for the next five years,
Maria would design and supervise the extraordinary restoration and

12
remodel of this home, which has become a destination for O’Keeffe
devotees from around the world.

This adaptation is intended to highlight a controversial relationship

that has been minimized, mischaracterized, or erased entirely from
Georgia’s history. It is a relationship between an older, gender-non-
conforming, fiercely independent artist and a young, lesbian butch
who was experiencing profound confusion about her identity and
about her place in the world. Whatever imbalances and dysfunction
there may have been between these incredibly strong-willed and
visionary women, one cannot dispute that the camping trips with
Maria resulted in some of Georgia’s most iconic landscapes, and that
the house and garden at Abiquiu stand as a stunning testament to a
lesbian’s devotion to her muse.

2 women, one narrator

90 minutes
Single set

13
 MUSICALS

THE AMAZON ALL-STARS

A Lesbian Musical

Music by Sue Carney

“… rollicking, fun piece that does touch on some serious

issues… The audience was in stitches for most of the play and
the rafters rang with applause.”—Santa Cruz Sentinel, CA.

“… delightful foot-tapping, arm-in-arm down the streets, sing-at-

the-top-of-your-lungs stuff… The Amazon All-Stars is ours. It’s
good, it’s fun… Lesbians need to see this show, to laugh and cry
with it, to love it...” —Lee Lynch, lesbian author and nationally
syndicated columnist.

“sexy, raucous… a real crowd-pleaser… ” —We the People,

Santa Rosa, CA.

“This is a sparkling, funny play...” —The Lithiagraph, Ashland, OR.

“… a great show...” —Women’s Voices, Santa Rosa, CA.

“… delightfully funny and sweet musical… With enlightening

musical numbers by Sue Carney and humor abounding, [we] are
drawn into the lives of these women as players and as people.”
—Lambda Book Report, Washington, DC.

The Amazon All-Stars is a zany musical comedy about a women’s

softball team. Kelly, the left fielder, is truly “out in left field,” preferring
her fantasies to reality. This makes for some great lesbian-style
Walter Mitty scenes. When Jan, the new short stop, decides to test
her sexual prowess with Kelly, both women are brought to a crisis
about the way they see themselves and the world. Amid various
subplots and subterfuges, team spirit triumphs, and everybody’s a

14
winner. Who could resist “Come Out for the Team,” “When Women
Do It to Each Other,” or “Ya Gotta Get Under the Glove”?

The Amazon All-Stars is written in the genre of the “naive musical” of

the 1930’s, but it’s anything but simple! The nine members of the
team are all fully developed with distinct personalities and
motivations. Also, there are three subplots, all presenting aspects of
denial in lesbian community and relationships: sorority politics in
collectives, alcohol abuse, infidelity, and the mistaking of sex for
intimacy.

The leads in the play, Jan and Kelly, are both ingenues, but their
relationship touches on the deeper issue of exploitation of women
who suffer syndromes from child sexual abuse. The secondary
relationship of the play is between an older couple with an eight-year
history. This relationship mirrors Jan and Kelly’s dilemma, but with
more depth, adding resonance to the central plot.

The lesbian empowerment fantasies encompass several areas of our

oppression and invisibility: sports, popular music, TV and film, and
families of birth. And the use of the Leather Woman provides a
“picture frame” device for the show, enhancing the theatricality of the
work and allowing women’s communities to showcase a local band.

The three ball players who “triple up” for additional fantasy chorus
roles, have parts written for them which allow them to play their own
alter-egos in the fantasy numbers. For example, Ursula, the high
school player, is the teenage bass player in the nightmare sequence.
Later, in another fantasy, she is Mary Richland, a former high school
friend who betrayed Kelly and turned straight. The audience
experiences a consistency of character through these sequences,
which adds coherence to the plot and helps anchor the fantasy
scenes in the realities of the ball players.

The numbers are all highly recognizable parodies of specific types of

popular music: the sleazy Stones rock-and-roll number, the fifties
ballad, the “womyn’s music” take-off. The lyrics range from
sophisticatedly cynical (“When Women Do It to Each Other”) to
sublimely ridiculous (“Under the Glove”).

The Amazon All-Stars takes a lightweight tradition and sets dramatic

precedent with a thoughtful and multidimensional treatment of lesbian
community.

15
Twelve women
Two hours
Three sets

LEADING LADIES
A Cabaret Musical Revue
Music by Teresa Wilhelmi

Leading Ladies is a sparkling all-women cabaret musical

incorporating seven separate historical vignettes onto a single set, a
backstage dressing room.

At the opening of the play, Mary, a young actor tortured by doubts

about her ability, debates whether or not she should abandon her
career in “The Voice of My Critics.” The dressing room comes alive
with ghosts of famous women actors, and one by one they reenact
critical moments in their own careers, when they had to confront fear
and doubt:

SARAH SIDDONS, fired from Drury Lane, realizes her

meteoric rise to fame was only the payoff for David Garrick’s
sexual exploitation of her. She resolves to play the provinces
until she can make it back to London by herself. She belts
out “When the Show Is Over,” the strip song to end all strip
songs.

CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN, laughed off the stage for being

fat, determines not to give in to humiliation with her
inspirational “Audience of One.”

ELEANORA DUSE, pregnant and abandoned by her lover at

the time of her big theatre break, pulls herself together so the
show can go on. The Stage Manager joins her for a theatrical
soft-shoe duet, “Improvise!”

SARAH BERNHARDT, rejected by French audiences who

have not forgiven her for deserting the national theatre, turns
the tables on Bastille Day at the Paris Opera. Thumbing her
nose at traditional proprieties, she sings, “I Know What

16
 Pleases the People,” a song which gives her the opportunity
to reprise a half dozen of her best on-stage dying effects.

MINNIE FISKE, the longest holdout against the notorious

Syndicate, rallies her troupe to give up their New York run
when she learns that the theatre where they are playing is
“all sold out.” Her loyal company joins her in the gospel
stomp, “All Sold Out” - but not before their rambunctious
rendition in three-part Sweet-Adeline harmony of “An Actress
Needs a Home.”

LAURETTE TAYLOR, after fifteen years without work,

overcomes the stigma of alcoholism to stage a risky
comeback in an unknown vehicle --- The Glass Menagerie.
Putting on “a little more rouge to hide all the blue,” she sings
a compelling torch song to “The Old Ingenue.”

Finally, Mary, with the help of the crusty stage manager and the feisty
older actor Edith, reaches a resolution to her dilemma: She will stay.

A note about the music: The fourteen musical numbers run the gamut
from bump-and-grind to gospel stomp, from three-part harmonies to
piano bar blues. Cabaret numbers with the emphasis on
entertainment.

Six women
Two hours
Single set

BABE: AN OLYMPIAN MUSICAL

Score by Andrea Jill Higgins

“Jill Higgins’s music, with Gage’s lyrics, fulfills musical

theater’s aim of driving the plot while having real substance.
This very entertaining play has humor, drama, and a wonderful
lesbian love story built around the larger-than-life (and very
American) character of Babe Didrikson. Girls who love sports
and women of all ages who aspire to greatness will be inspired.
Taking the risk to focus on a butch lesbian woman, Carolyn

17
Gage has given us all a gift of female courage and tenacity…” —
Twin Cities Daily Planet, MN.

This is a major new musical and a milestone in musical theatre. It’s a

play about women athletes, about world class competition, about
mothers and sisters, and about the bisexual woman who broke all the
rules to become the “Athlete of the Century”— Babe Didrikson.

The play traces Babe’s career from high school basketball star, to
Olympic gold medalist in track, to vaudevillian sideshow, to first
woman on the professional golf circuit. Her struggles for athletic
achievement parallel her personal struggles for recognition and
acceptance by her mother and sister. Babe’s sexual orientation
emerges against a backdrop of feminine stereotypes and
heterosexist constraints.

This musical celebrates the woman athlete at the same time it

explores the darker themes of how women denied opportunities for
professional advancement can sabotage each other, passing on
poisonous conditioning from one generation to another. Babe’s
founding of the Ladies’ Professional Golf Association is depicted as
the crowning achievement of both her personal and her professional
struggle.

The show is a big, brassy, full-cast, mainstage musical, featuring a

high school gymnasium dance and beauty pageant, a choreographed
jazz interpretation of a women’s basketball game, a pajama party on
the Olympic train, a tango at the country club, and one of the most
stunning love duets in musical theatre. Numbers include “Let the
Boys Lead the Dance,” “Olympic Gold,” “Readin’ the Green,” and
Babe’s theme song, “Winning Makes Up for It All.”

Eight women, eight men (can double several roles)

Men and women’s choruses
Two hours
Multiple sets

WOMEN ON THE LAND

A Lesbian Musical

18
Women on the Land contrasts the world of the Los Angeles film studio
with the rural environment of a lesbian land collective in southern
Oregon, and points up the choices lesbian artists are forced to make
between selling our art and protecting our vision. The show also
provides a retrospective of lesbian culture in the early 70’s, with the
attendant witch hunts and “political correctness” wars.

Stevie, who produces lesbian erotic videos in Los Angeles, finds that
her protégé and lover, Damian, is becoming impatient to make a
“real” lesbian film. Dialogue breaks down over the question of money
for the project, and just then Catherine, Stevie’s old lover from fifteen
years ago shows up on the scene. Catherine lives at Herland, a
lesbian land collective she and Stevie founded in the 70’s. Damian,
determined to find the women who don’t care about money,
accompanies Catherine back to Herland. Stevie pursues her, and is
in turn pursued by a leather porno star bucking for the role of lesbian
vampire in the next film.

The second act opens at Herland, in the middle of a severe drought.

Tempers flair and cultural and ideological sparks fly as the Los
Angeles leather scene invades the kingdom of Oregon country dykes.
Magic is abroad on the night of Hallowmas, and the women discover
in themselves the common lesbian values that have been lost in both
worlds.

This musical has something for everyone: The opening rock video
number from the infamous “Lesbian Vampires From Hell,” the sexual
auction at the notorious Ladyfingers Bar, the potluck-western dance
“Country Dish,” and playful “Denim and Flannel Rag.”

Six women, one twelve-year old girl

Chorus of women
Two hours
Multiple sets

HOW TO WRITE A COUNTRY-WESTERN SONG

A Concert with a Plot

19
 Score by Christa Hillhouse (formerly of 4 Non
Blondes) and Kitty Rose

This is a five-women musical featuring gospel, rock, country, hip-hop,

and folk music. It is written for the women’s music festivals, intended
to be cast with performers from the women’s music community, and
requiring no set except a concert stage. The play ends with a twenty-
minute concert.

This is a play about love, recovery, and music in the women’s music
community. The plot revolves around two couples, an older one and
a younger one, who have histories as bandmates.

Country-western singer Trish attempts to lead the audience in a

workshop about writing country-western songs. She is repeatedly
interrupted by her former partner/bandmate/ rock star Carson. Trish,
remembering Carson’s years of active addiction, rejects her attempts
to reconcile.

Meanwhile, a band on Trish’s label is scheduled to record their

second CD at Carson’s studio. The two very young musicians, Nikita
and Jay, have broken up as lovers, but are attempting to continue on
as a band. Nikki is an active addict and Jay is struggling with early
recovery. Their collaboration breaks down as Nikki uses sex to derail
Jay’s recovery.

Sonya, a veteran activist from the Black Freedom Movement and

member of an all-women, African American, a cappella group, shows
up in time to remind the women of their history. Jay, drunk, insults
Sonya’s gospel music, recounting an angry episode where she was
expelled from her church when she came out as lesbian.

Back in the studio, Nikki has stolen money from Jay and attempts to
seduce Carson, who has busted her. Trish overhears their encounter,
stunned to see Carson not only turn Nikki down, but evict her from
the studio. Trish sings a song, “The Prison of My Mind,” in which she
shifts the focus from judging her former partner to noticing how her
resentments have impeded her own growth over the years.

Carson, Sonya, Trish, and Jay come together for a final concert. Jay
resolves her conflict over a “higher power” and shares it with the
audience in “Believe in the Women Who Believe.” Trish makes
amends to Carson for her self-righteousness and finally gets to sing

20
her country-western song. The concert ends with a celebration of
diversity, recovery and women’s music.

2 African American women, 3 women of any race

Single set (a concert stage)
90 minutes.

21
 FULL-LENGTH PLAYS

SAPPHO IN LOVE
A Lesbian Midsummer Night’s Dream

“Gage's script romps along with sexy smarts and lubricious

hilarity… filled with memorable lines and saucy double-
entendres.”—The Isthmus, Madison, WI.

“… hardly a minute goes by that the theater does not fill up with
laughter… entertaining and wildly pleasing to the audience.”—
Badger Herald, Madison, WI.

“… Sappho in Love disproves the old canard about lesbians

lacking a sense of humor… These are some funny, funny
lesbians.”—Sacramento News and Reviews, CA.

“… delicious… sweet, funny, moving, tender… eminently

playable… richly imagined, perfectly conceived piece...” —
John Stoltenberg, author and activist.

The following are audience remarks from the public website

www.seeaplay.com/productionsReviewsSapphoLP.htm:

“I caught this show last night at their sold out opening and
laughed until my sides hurt. Seriously, the whole audience was
howling. If you’re in the mood for a great comedy on a weekend
night to help beat the heat, this is the one to see. By which I
mean I expect this show to sell out fast if last night’s audience
has any say in the matter… THE smash hit of the summer.”

Sappho In Love was a fast moving, funny take on classical Greek

comedies. I am not a lesbian, nor was the person I went with, yet
we enjoyed it very much. I will probably take some other friends
to see this...”

“… Sappho in Love was not what I expected it to be. It was a fun,

sassy show that had the audience laughing throughout.”

22
“My partner and I were looking for a romantic date night activity
and happened upon this phenomenal play! Touching, funny,
gregarious—well worth the money! For anyone who enjoys the
theater, Sappho in Love is one of the most side-splitting two
hours you can have! Hysterical, sweet and just a little different!
See the play and tell your friends!”

“I thought this play was so funny. I laughed the entire time. I am

telling everyone not to miss it. Good job Lambda. One of your
best!”

“I watched Sappho on Friday the 18th and must have laughed

every twenty seconds for two hours. This play is unique, well-
produced, and you shouldn’t miss it… The play is charming,
energizing, and I’m so happy to have seen it!”

“You don’t have to be a Lesbian to enjoy the machinations of the

three goddesses of love as they plot and scheme to win control
of Lesbos and eventually The World! This show is a total romp.”

Sappho in Love is a riotous romp across the slippery terrain of

Lesbian romance, as the goddesses on Olympus come down to earth
to recruit among Sappho and her followers.

Artemis, the Goddess of Lesbian Celibacy, and Hera, the Goddess of

Monogamy, join forces to challenge Aphrodite, the Goddess of Lust,
for her hegemony on Lesbos. Sappho, the great poet and teacher on
the island, is a devotee of Aphrodite, and because of this, her school
has become a center for the cult of lesbian sexuality and romantic
love. Artemis, denouncing Aphrodite’s use of her intoxicating nectar
to attract followers, vows to found a rival school on Lesbos where
young girls will be weaned away from Sappho’s decadent teachings
to learn the more sober arts of wilderness survival.

But Artemis underestimates the power of lesbian seduction, when

Aphrodite sends Persuasion, her handmaiden, to enroll in outdoor
school—and when the Goddess of Celibacy finds herself entangled
with the Slave of Desire, she discovers that freedom without intimacy
can be as meaningless as intimacy without freedom.

Meanwhile… Sappho herself is experiencing girl trouble when her

longsuffering partner, fed up with Sappho’s infidelities, begins to date
another woman. Add to the midsummer mix-up, the arrival of a new
student who can’t wait to taste the pleasures of Lesbian life, and the

23
painful trials of a student whose best friend is on the eve of leaving
the island to marry a soldier.

Sapphic poetry abounds amid meteor showers, midsummer eve

trysts, masquerades and melodramas—all overseen by the
benevolent trio of lesbian “deae ex machina!” Throw in a rowdy troupe
of soaking-wet naiads and it all adds up to a tasty dish of lesbian
comedy. In the end, the couples sort themselves out, for better or
worse, and Hera pronounces her blessings on a new matriarchal
order.

10 women, 1 little girl, unspecified number of chorus members

2 hours
Multiple sets

THE ANASTASIA TRIALS IN THE COURT OF WOMEN

An Interactive Drama in Two Acts

“Carolyn Gage’s raucous, multilayered script explores issues

of empathy, loyalty, and betrayal among women...” —The
Washington Post.

“Verdict: An unexpected delight… ” —Miami Herald, FL.

“… farcical humor, imaginative plot twists, and just pure

theatrical fun...” —South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Ft. Lauderdale.

“… powerful new play… thoughtfully written...” —San Diego

Lesbian Press, CA.

“… fascinating and complex play…”—Fresno Beehive.com

“The Anastasia Trials is many things—farce, social history,

debate play, agitprop, audience-participation melodrama,
satire… makes the head reel!” —San Diego Union-Tribune.

“I am constantly amazed at Carolyn’s ability to make complex

social issues not only accessible but also irresistibly
fascinating… the play… [The Anastasia Trials ] touched us,
made us laugh and gripped us in a white-knuckle intensity

24
usually found only in Hitchcock films.” —R.J. McComish, Literary
Manager of the Portland Stage Company, Portland, Maine.

“… fabulously interesting, brilliantly thought-provoking and

exquisitely funny… masterpiece of feminist theater...” —off our
backs, Washington, DC.

The Anastasia Trials in the Court of Women makes theatre history

with an interactive courtroom drama that engages the audience to
serve as both judge and jury. The play is shaped by the audience
decisions to overrule or sustain the attorneys’ motions, and every
night’s audience sees a different play.

The Anastasia Trials is a farcical, but profoundly engaging excursion

into the hidden world of ethics for women who are both survivors and
perpetrators of abuse toward women. The format is a play-within-a-
play, where a radical feminist theatre company comes together in
order to perform a courtroom drama.

In presenting the play, the Emma Goldman Theatre Brigade has

instituted a new system to insure equal opportunity for the actors: a
lottery. As the women assemble to draw their roles from the hat for
the evening’s performance, sisterhood is put to the test. The
performance itself is a conspiracy trial against five women accused
of denying a woman her identity. The plaintiff is none other than
Anastasia Romanov, sole survivor of the massacre of the Russian
imperial family in 1918. The audience is required to serve as judge
and jury for the case, providing both rulings on the motions and the
final verdict.

The Anastasia Trials in the Court of Women requires intense

audience participation, and the question of women betraying women
is called for every member of the audience.

Nine women
Two hours
Single set (nine folding chairs)

THE SPINDLE

25
 A Drama in Two Acts

“This play is simply brilliant—in its construct, its characters

and its dialogue.”—Sacramento Art and Entertainment Examiner.

“Carolyn Gage’s The Spindle is a brilliant, courageous and

important “adult retelling” of Sleeping Beauty, in which Beauty’s
hundred-years’ sleep is her amnesia from incest. In reading it (in
just reading it!) I saw what is not possible to put into words
alone. Like Harold Pinter’s The Homecoming, the disconnects
we witness on stage could not have been told as well in another
genre. Our hypnosis from grasping what we’ve seen all our lives
in our own terrible crises, but which are taboo, the-never-put-in-
words, the never said, is shattered. Sleeping Beauty/The Spindle
is one of the fairy tales we must wake up from (it’s been a lot
more than a hundred years). Gage is regularly hailed as one of
the best lesbian playwrights in America, but I want to say—if she
will allow this and I understand and accept if she won’t—simply
one of our best playwrights.”—Sharon Doubiago, My Father’s
Love, Portrait of the Poet as a Young Girl; Love on the Streets,
Selected and New Poems.

A radical retelling of the fairy tale “Sleeping Beauty,” The Spindle

exploits the conventions of children’s theatre to give adult audiences
a child’s-eye-view of incest and its effects on the survivors.

The Princess Beauty has been kept from the knowledge of a curse
which decrees she must be pricked by a spindle before her sixteenth
birthday and fall asleep for a hundred years. She has been best
friends from childhood with Doko, the cook’s helper in the palace
kitchen, and the two girls have plans to renovate a gypsy wagon and
travel about the kingdom with a puppet theatre after Beauty’s
sixteenth birthday.

The plans are disrupted when Beauty’s godfather shows up

unexpectedly at the birthday banquet with a “gift” which, according to
the perpetrator, will empower her as an adult. The Queen, torn
between a desire to protect her daughter and a need to neutralize her
as a potential rival, reveals a family secret, which sets the stage for
Beauty’s pricking.

Meanwhile, Doko’s three godmothers wrestle among themselves with

their various strategies for dealing with the pricking curse. Betheen

26
practices denial in the name of acting grownup; Andrea relies on her
prowess in the martial arts to confront her fears; and the third
godmother, Mary, surrounds herself with ritual and magical charms.
It is Doko’s marionette (played by an actor) who alone knows the
truth. She carries Doko’s traumatic memories of her childhood, and it
is she who has witnessed the events on the night of Beauty’s
sixteenth birthday. But the puppet is mute and can only communicate
through acts of sabotage.

When Doko attempts to rouse Beauty from her spindle-induced

trance, she becomes a target for a bewildering array of homophobic,
morning-after behaviors, and the godmothers fare no better in their
attempts to break through the Queen’s alcoholic narcissism.

The final showdown takes place in the perpetrator’s pornographic

gallery, where the forces of good meet the forces of evil in an old-
fashioned, knock-down-drag-out, chandelier-swinging, skull-cracking
free-for-all. The moral of the story is that life is not a fairy tale, and the
price of empowerment is coming out of denial, as Doko and her
godmothers discover.

The juxtaposition of standard children’s theatre conventions in The

Spindle with what is usually considered adult subject matter
accentuates the archetypal horror that lies under the surface of so
many “normal” childhoods.

9 women, 2 girls, unspecified extras

Multiple sets times
2 hours

UGLY DUCKLINGS
A Lesbian Drama

“If it is possible that a piece of theatre can be both gritty and

sublime at the same time, then Venus Theatre has achieved it in
their world premiere production of Carolyn Gage’s Ugly
Ducklings.” —Metro Weekly Review, Washington, DC.
“… deserves a central place in the lesbian feminist literary
canon...” —off our backs, Washington, DC.

27
 “… refreshingly well told tale that while raising all the issues
that this anti-homophobic company and playwright want to
raise, does so with an admirable restraint, avoiding the obvious
traps of sensationalism and titillation and striking an admirable
balance of theatricality and realism.” —Potomac Stages,
Washington, DC.

“… a play about coming of age and homophobia and how people

deal with emerging understandings about sexuality. It’s a tough,
tough, tough topic, and it’s handled here with a great deal of raw
energy, but also with a great deal of subtlety… a very, very nice
piece… definitely worth seeing.” —Peter Fay for WAMU (NPR
affiliate station), Washington, DC.
“Radically redefining beauty… Ugly Ducklings reveals how
notions of homosexuality can shatter the souls of girls and
women… an impressive work… a brutally honest examination of
what it means to be a young lesbian...” —The Washington Blade,
Washington, DC.

“Funny, poignant, unpredictable… very well-written.

Educational without being preachy. Engaging. Absorbing.
Sweet.” —Mariah Burton-Nelson, Athlete, Speaker, Author of Are
We Winning Yet?

“… like the best drama, Gage’s play is filled to bursting with

sharp-edged double meaning and irony… accessible and
engaging format, with the social consciousness of Ibsen and
Shaw...” —Assunta Kent, Phd., from introduction to At Play:
An Anthology of Maine Drama.

Ugly Ducklings picks up where Tea and Sympathy and The Children’s
Hour left off. Set in a girls’ summer camp, the play explores the
dynamics of homophobia in a same-sex environment.

A gothic thriller, Ugly Ducklings examines the unhealthy turns that

relationships between girls can take when they are not allowed their
natural expression. The so-called “Ophelia Syndrome” comes alive
as the cabin of younger girls, their self-esteem still reinforced by the
primacy of their relationships, comes into contact with the older girls
who have begun to turn against themselves and each other in their
attempts to conform to the pressures of compulsory heterosexuality.

Angie, a middle-class college student, is falling in love with another

counselor at the camp, Renée, who is a working-class “out” lesbian.

28
Against this backdrop of intense homophobia, the young women
struggle with their feelings for each other and the problems of defining
themselves in a society that insists they be invisible. The camp
legend about a monster in the lake parallels the adult phobias about
lesbianism, and, confronted with an attempted child suicide, campers
and counselors are compelled to face their worst fears in the
microcosmic world of the summer camp.

Ugly Ducklings breaks ranks with male-centered queer drama in

foregrounding the experience of women and girls who are survivors
of sexual violence and shattering romantic and sentimental
conventions about the “gentle sex.”

Nine girls, five women

Two hours
Single set

THANATRON
A Comedy in Two Acts

This is a rollicking farce about the world’s most dysfunctional family,

a doctor with a penchant for assisted suicide, and a lesbian
housekeeper with a crush on her employer. An over-the-top comedy
about leaving, being left, and what it takes to stay.

The play opens a few hours before Molly Hawthorne’s assisted-

suicide, going-away party. Molly, a depressed, middle-class
housewife, has become distressed by what she perceives as a loss
of memory that has impaired her ability to function as a perfect wife
and mother. Convinced that suicide is an empowering choice, she
encounters a snag in her plans when she attempts to recruit her
lesbian housekeeper to bartend for the party.

Dani, an Italian butch, is appalled by Molly’s project and disgusted

with her family for supporting it. She teams up with Caitlin, the ten-
year-old, tomgirl daughter, to sabotage Thanatron, the notorious
“death machine” for the doctor-assisted suicide.

29
Thanatron relies on a sodium pentathol intervenous drip to render the
“patient” drowsy enough to trigger the lethal chemical that will stop
the heart. When the sodium pentathol dose is altered, Molly finds that,
instead of losing consciousness, she is regaining her memories—
including memories of repressed childhood trauma.

A satiric commentary on a culture that would rather see its women

dead than telling the truth, Thanatron deconstructs the social
machinery that makes death an appealing alternative for the old, the
disabled, the single, and the lesbian.

Five women, five men, one girl, and a variable number of adult extras
Single set
Two hours

ESTHER AND VASHTI

A Drama in Two Acts

A radical feminist retelling of the traditional Purim story from the

Bible—a retelling that foregrounds the part of the story that is glossed
over in the patriarchal text, namely, the sexual colonization of women.

Esther, a radical Jewish lesbian living in exile, and Vashti, a Persian

woman of privilege, were lovers. Complying with her family’s
expectations, Vashti has married the king of Persia, but Esther cannot
interpret this as anything except a betrayal and an abandonment.
When Vashti encourages a Persian captain to court Esther, Esther is
outraged and goes to the palace to confront her former girlfriend.

The ambitious vice-chancellor Haman has been stirring up anti-

Semitic sentiment among the officers of the Persian army, in order to
use a massacre of the Jews to divert attention from his usurpation of
the throne.

In the meantime, during Esther’s visit to the harem, the king is holding
a banquet for his officers—a banquet that features the rape of one of
the women from the harem. Vashti is shocked and terrified when she
discovers that she has been called to “dance” for the officers. Esther
engineers her escape from the palace, and the two women go
underground, hiding in the homes of Jewish women.

30
Esther is discovered by Haman during a roundup of eligible virgins as
candidates for queenship. Vashti, knowing that Esther could never
submit to sexual violation, goes to the palace to die with her lover.
The play reaches its dramatic climax when the plight of the two
women coincides with the palace takeover by the army, a revolt of
the harem women, and a daring rescue attempt by Jewish vigilante
women, led by Esther’s young cousin.

Esther and Vashti attempt to avert the impending massacre of the

Jews by issuing an edict granting the Jews permission to arm and
defend themselves against their enemies. This mandate for self-
defense is ritualized in the final scene, when the Jewish women and
the harem women join together to commemorate the anniversary of
their victory and to pledge themselves to the defense of their
daughters and each other.

This is a fast-paced, high-action drama where the love story of two

women of different cultures and class backgrounds plays itself out
against a backdrop of anti-Semitism and the sexual colonization of
women.

Thirteen women, eight men, two teenaged girls (unspecified of male

and female extras)
Two hours
Multiple sets

STIGMATA
A Tragedy in Five Acts

Based on a true story, Stigmata is a five-act tragedy about the

extraordinary life of the 16th century, Italian nun, Benedetta Carlini.

Benedetta, raised like a son by her father, is caught acting out sexual
tableaux with her girlfriends. Fearful of the consequences of
Benedetta’s precocious sexuality, her mother incarcerates her in a
convent when Benedetta begins to menstruate.

The Abbess, whose enlightened policies have kept the convent from
becoming enclosed, makes Benedetta her assistant, and the two

31
women fall in love with each other. On the eve of the move to a large
convent, Benedetta confronts the Abbess on this love, and the
Abbess suffers a heart attack and dies. Benedetta, without the
protection of the Abbess, faces demotion to a convent servant
position. In an attempt to counter this, she stages a miracle in the
middle of the procession to the new convent, receiving the stigmata
(spontaneous bleeding of the hands and feet, in imitation of Jesus’
wounds) in front of the entire town of Pescia.

On the strength of this miracle, Benedetta becomes the new abbess.

She moves for immediate enclosure of the convent and adoption of
the draconian Rules of Saint Augustine. With the approval of the old-
fashioned, misogynist confessor of the convent, Father Ricordati, she
introduces Church-sanctioned, sado-masochistic practices, including
whipping, in order to punish her critics and consolidate her power.
She seduces a gullible young nun by convincing her that it is the will
of God for the girl to have sex with an angel named Splenditello, who
will come and occupy Benedetta’s body for the duration of the sex
act.

Benedetta organizes a public wedding between herself and Jesus.

The town provost, realizing that things have gone too far, orders
Ricordati to stop the wedding. When Ricordati tries to confront
Benedetta, she stages a miracle that sets Ricordati up for blackmail.
At the height of the wedding spectacle, the provost confronts
Benedetta with the charges against her. She manages to hold her
own, until the victim of her seduction steps forward with her story.
Placed under arrest, Benedetta curses the town and promises that
God will send the plague to punish them.

Fifteen years later, when the plague is once again ravishing Italy, the
townspeople storm the convent, demanding the release of
Benedetta, who has been imprisoned all these years. Benedetta
defies her tormentors, including her mother, dying with a vision of her
beloved Abbess. At her death, she manifests authentic stigmata. The
provost and the new abbess decide to parade Benedetta’s body
through the town in order to appease the crowd—knowing that this
concession to popular ignorance and superstition, will result in mass
contagion of the plague.

Ten women, two men, unspecified number of extras

Three hours
Multiple sets

32
 COMING ABOUT
A Three-Act Play About Changing Roles in Marriage

Coming About is a play that looks at the dramatic change in the

institution of marriage over the last forty years. Kay, in her early
thirties, is married to a man over twice her age. Finally confronting
the facts about their age discrepancies, she begins to move toward
establishing her own life.

The play opens at the wedding reception for a neighbor, and the
presence of Kay’s husband’s grown children, the question of
inheritance, and her mother’s bitter reminders about her own
marriage turn the festive weekend into a pressure cooker of gender
roles. The wedding gives way to a hurricane, and the five couples in
the play undergo a sea change before the night is over as the women
come to terms with their loss of identity in marriage.

Six women, three men

Two hour
Single set

THE GODDESS TOUR

A Murder Mystery in Two Acts

“… a mix of comedy, drama, murder-mystery and a whole lot of

fun… ” —Talk, Palm Springs, CA.

Dr. Lorraine Livingstone leads women’s tours to ancient, sacred sites

of goddess worship. She and five members of her tour are gathering
at an inn on the Burren of Western Ireland for a tour of Celtic sites.
The guests include a feuding lesbian couple on their way to China to
adopt a baby, a celebrated author of best-selling murder mysteries, a
frivolous divorcée, and a mysterious last-minute arrival.

33
It’s February 2, Imbolc—the Celtic celebration that marks the end of
winter and the beginning of spring. It’s also the season when,
according to legend, the Greek earth-mother goddess Demeter
emerges from the Underworld with her rescued daughter
Persephone. The theme of lost daughters haunts the inn and its
inhabitants, as mysterious voices and artifacts point to the murder of
a girl-child, and each of the guests admits to some form of betrayal of
the sacred mother-daughter bond.

Lorraine is haunted by the memory of the out-of-wedlock child she

was forced to relinquish at sixteen. The divorcée laments her failure
to fight harder for the custody of her children. The lesbian partners,
still bedeviled with the demons of their own childhoods, debate the
wisdom of becoming mothers.

The inn harbors a secret that is shared by the mysterious innkeeper

Bridie and her nemesis, the author. Their history unfolds as a
backdrop to the secret history between Lorraine and her mysterious
latecomer.

This is a murder mystery with all the classic ingredients: the dark and
stormy night, the remote location , the strangers at the inn with their
mysterious pasts, the ghostly intrusions, the attempted murder, and
the obligatory gathering of the guests in the parlor for the final
dénouement.

What sets The Goddess Tour apart from the genre is the depth of
exploration of the potentially murderous dyad of mothers and
daughters, pitted against each other in a struggle for survival in a
corporate, capitalist, colonialist world. Celtic ritual and goddess lore
are interwoven with sacred imagery of gestation and birth, as these
are counterposed with legacies of violence against women and
children, the brutal history of Ireland’s colonization, and the horrors of
slavery on the American continent. Class and race divisions inform
discussions of adoption, with a pervasive critique of “globalization”
and its impact on motherhood. A good, old-fashioned murder mystery
that packs a feminist punch.

7 women
Single set
2 hours

34
 BLACK STAR
A Play About Henrietta Vinton Davis

In Black Star, the greatest African American classical actress of the

19th Century, Henrietta Vinton Davis, wrestles with a ghost who is
calling into question her entire lifework.

Henrietta Vinton Davis is backstage in Liberty Hall, Harlem, preparing

to introduce Marcus Garvey at the 1924 national convention for
Garvey’s legendary organization, UNIA (the Universal Negro
Improvement Association). Just as she is about to leave the dressing
room, she is interrupted by the intrusive presence of the ghost of
Robert Poston, a former UNIA colleague.

Poston is challenging Davis’ support of Marcus Garvey and Garvey’s

African Redemption movement, founded on the dream of buying a
steamship line to carry hundreds of thousands of African Americans
“back to the Motherland” of Africa. Earlier in the year, Poston and
Davis were part of a UNIA delegation to Liberia, where it became
clear that Garvey’s dream of resettlement was impossible. Bitter and
disillusioned, Poston succumbed to pneumonia on the return voyage,
and now his ghost has returned to haunt Davis, who continues to
promote Garvey’s dream.

Davis, attempting to throw off this ghostly visitor, conjures various

scenes from her long career in theatre where she had to face serious
challenges to her success.
These flashback vignettes include racist heckling at her debut with
Powhatan Beatty at the Ford Theatre in Washington, a scene of
domestic violence with her husband/manager in Cincinatti, and her
dilemma in opening a theatre in Chicago to compete with the 1893
Columbian Exposition.

Davis finds herself unable to shake the ghost of Robert Poston, until
she reveals the impact of his early death on his wife and infant
daughter. In her final bid to exorcise Poston’s ghost, she returns to
the 1923 mail fraud trail of Garvey, where the prosecution’s star
witness, a janitor at Penn Station, reveals the secret behind his
“worthless” stock certificates in the Black Star steamship line.

The play is a celebration of an African American actress whose

radical choice to avoid vaudeville, minstrel shows, and plantation

35
dramas got her effectively written out of theatre history. It’s also an
exploration of the controversies that continue to swirl around Marcus
Garvey, whose influence on leaders of the Civil Rights era cannot be
overestimated. Finally, it is a tribute to the pragmatism of cherishing
and propagating a radical dream, and to the activist artists for whom
this is their lifework.

3 African American woman: 65, 30’s, and 16.

6 African American men: mid-20’s, 75, two mid-30’s, two 40’s.
One male, any race, 20’s.
(Several male roles can be doubled.)

IN MCCLINTOCK’S CORN
A Play In Two Acts

The entire play is set in a cornfield. The play is about gender-non-

conforming geneticist Barbara McClintock and her
companion/partner Harriet Creighton, and McClintock’s revolutionary
quest to understand diversity in nature and to reframe “deviance” as
an expression of natural variance.

The cornfield—the land—is the constant. We see the two women

driven from the fields of Cornell by discrimination and the Great
Depression. We see McClintock returning from an aborted fellowship
in Berlin in 1934, shattered by the horrors of rising Nazism and the
co-opting of genetics for fascist theories of eugenics and propagation
of a “master race.” Harriet joins the Women’s Army Corps in World
War II, leaving Barbara in the cornfield of Cold Spring Harbor
Laboratory, where monastic isolation is the price for her patch of corn.

In the 1950’s, her cornfield is literally and figuratively invaded by Jim

Watson, the co-discoverer of the structure of DNA and proponent of
the Central Dogma that was supposed to have cracked the code for
understanding life. In this era of homophobic witch hunts and nuclear
weaponry, McClintock’s work is considered obscure and obsolete.
Finally, in her eighties, Barbara is working in her cornfield when
Harriet comes to tell her that she has been awarded a Nobel prize for
the work that was despised and ridiculed for decades. The major
movements of the world have buffeted and washed over this woman
who stood her ground—literally—for sixty years, planting her beloved

36
corn year after year, entering its cellular world via the microscope,
and teaching us that life is infinitely more adaptive, more complex,
and more to be revered than our dogmatic and arrogant theories
would allow.

This is a play about the physical land that women and minorities are
and are not allowed to occupy, and the theories that justify
displacement. It’s also about the metaphysics of “place,” the bodies
we occupy, the cellular realities, and our relationship to nature—the
final arbiter of whose land it will ultimately be.

5 women, 2 men
Single set (cornfield)
Two hours

37
 ONE-ACT PLAYS
MASON-DIXON
A One-Act for Two Women

“… extremely powerful piece… Gage takes on race issues,

feminism, incest… stunning… ” —The Vanguard, Portland, OR.

“… complex and painful subtleties of racism...” —Lithiagraph,

Ashland, OR.

Mason-Dixon explores the complex relationship between a Black

woman and a white woman, who loved each other as children, were
separated at puberty, and who find themselves at mid-life divided by
race, class, and politics.

As a plantation owner’s daughter, Elizabeth was “given” an enslaved

child, Mary, who was her same age. The two girls grew up together,
loving each other as sisters and sharing their resources. At puberty,
Elizabeth was sent to a private boarding school, and it was thirty
years before she was to see Mary again, by then a free woman
teaching in a Black school in Philadelphia.

When the play opens, Elizabeth is demanding that Mary recognize

their former friendship. Mary, now an angry Black separatist, is not so
eager to reclaim the past. Elizabeth has become a spy for the Union
army, and in what she sees as the ultimate gesture of reconciliation,
offers Mary the “opportunity” to gather intelligence by working as a
maid at the Confederate White House.

Mary, repudiating Elizabeth’s claims of sisterhood, reveals that she

was sexually molested by Elizabeth’s father. She is shocked to
discover that Elizabeth was also his victim. The women struggle with
issues of race, class, and gender oppression as they alternately
challenge and deny the great love they once had for each other. The
play is based on the true story of Elizabeth Van Lew and Mary
Bowser.

2 women
35 minutes
Single set

38
 JANE ADDAMS AND THE DEVIL BABY
A One-Act Play

In 1912, Jane Addams was witness to a strange phenomenon, as

thousands of immigrants flocked to Hull House in response to the
rumor that there was a “Devil Baby” there. The Devil Baby was
supposedly an infant with hooves, horns, and tail. According to folk
myths, this incarnation of the devil was the result of a drunken
husband’s curse that he’d rather see a devil in the house than another
baby.

In this one-act, Jane confronts an elderly Irish woman who has

broken into Hull House with the single-minded intention of gaining
access to the Devil Baby. The woman is not to be deterred, and Jane
matches wits with her in her attempt to find an explanation for this
strange obsession which seems to have taken possession of half
Chicago.

A radical confrontation between the sensibilities of a nineteenth

century emigrant wife and mother, and a modern American lesbian of
independent means.

Three women
20 minutes
Single set

LOUISA MAY INCEST

A One-Act for Two Women
“… crackled with energy and glowed with warmth… illustrated
all that is the best about theatre.” —-The Maui News, HI.

“… an overlay of brilliantly ironic humor on the utterly serious

issues with which it deals.” —Lithiagraph, Ashland, OR.

“Watching Jo confront Louisa, the audience’s collective belief

marked a new point in taking ourselves seriously as people with
a herstory; as creators and receivers of lesbian mysticism and

39
art. 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.” —Introduction by Bonnie Morris in Amazon All Stars:
Thirteen Lesbian Plays (New York: Applause Books, 1996),

Louisa May Alcott has locked her alter-ego, Jo March, out of her study
in order to finish Little Women alone. Jo manages to break in. She
confronts Louisa about her desire to end their collaboration. Louisa
admits her intention to have Jo burn all her writing and marry the
aging and self-righteous Professor at the end of the book.

Jo knows her author better than Louisa knows herself, and she
begins to uncover Louisa’s true motives in violating her own creation.
When Jo introduces evidence of Bronson Alcott’s child molesting and
Louisa’s lesbianism, the conflict between Jo and Louisa becomes a
life-and-death struggle for control of the book.

Two women
30 minutes
Single set

BATTERED ON BROADWAY
A Vendetta in One Act

“… shockingly fresh and compelling...” —Women’s Voices, Santa

Rosa, CA.

“… daring iconoclasm...” —The Lithiagraph, Ashland, OR.

Nellie Forbush of South Pacific is in Mame’s Manhattan penthouse to

host a benefit luncheon for a Broadway Battered Women’s Shelter.
Her guests include Bess of Porgy and Bess, Julie Jordan of Carousel,
Sally Bowles of Cabaret, Mei Li from Flower Drum Song, Maria from
West Side Story, and Aldonza from Man of La Mancha. These
women, most of them now in their sixties, look back in horror on their
various onstage rapes, batterings, and partnerings with inferior men.

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Orphan Annie puts in an unexpected appearance and is outraged to
discover that Daddy Warbucks has donated the money to buy the
building for the shelter. She tells Nellie that when the reporters arrive,
she will expose him as a child molester. Nellie is concerned that this
will jeopardize the project. She threatens to have Annie arrested if
she doesn’t leave. Sally Bowles intervenes, and Annie is in for a
surprise when the nun reveals her secret identity and initiates Annie
into the mysteries of an underground men-killing vigilante group.

Battered on Broadway is a theatrical tour-de-force, combining the

farcical romp of comic strip characters with the conventions of an old-
fashioned murder mystery in a plot which not only rewrites the history
of musicals from a woman’s point of view, but which also tackles the
most divisive social issue of the 90’s: violence toward women. A play
with many layers!

Ten women
35 minutes
Single set

CALAMITY JANE SENDS A MESSAGE TO HER DAUGHTER

A Monologue

“… lyric prose lines to die for...” —The Lesbian Review of Books,

Altadena, CA.

“… wondrous… ” —Asbury Park Press, NJ.

This work is based on the real Calamity Jane. Vulgar, debauched,

and raunchy, Jane is considered a freak by women and a laughing
stock by men. Without the strictures of compulsory heterosexuality,
she might have had the freedom to live the life of a roughrider without
having to pass as a man. She might have been given the place in
history which was accorded to her sidekick, James Butler Hickok. And
she might have found a way to satisfy her frustrated desire for
acceptance by women.

Jane is a butch woman who had the misfortune to be born in an era

before lesbian culture. She is a feisty woman with a keen sense of

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humor, who has kept herself going with a number of destructive
myths which are familiar to all of us.

One woman
15 minutes
Single set

COOKIN’ WITH TYPHOID MARY

A Culinary Monologue

“… blood-curdling, side-splitting… out of the mouths of full-

blown characters who can mount a stage and own it.” —The
Lesbian Review of Books, Altadena, CA.

Mary Mallon, dubbed “Typhoid Mary” by a hostile press, never

admitted that she was a typhoid carrier. Her persistent refusal to defer
to medical experts infuriated George Soper, a sanitation engineer for
New York City. He built his career on tracking down Mary and
incarcerating her. In this monologue, Mary speaks for herself. An Irish
emigrant, she traces the story of her persecution back to the Potato
Famine, all the while eyeing and chopping potatoes for the stew pot
in the kitchen of the mysterious institution where she cooks.

Mary’s version of events is both humorous and chilling. She resists a

theory of germs that would indict her for murder, when half of Ireland
starved to death before the indifferent eyes of the world.

One woman
25 minutes
Single set

ARTEMISIA AND HILDEGARD

An Exorcism in One Act

“… threatened the status quo like Thelma and Louise… a truly

remarkable play… ” —We the People, Santa Rosa, CA.

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Artemisia and Hildegard is a complex and powerful two-woman show,
featuring two of the most famous women artists in history, together
on an explosive arts panel about survival strategies for women artists.

Hildegard Von Bingen, German abbess from the 12th century, and
Artemisia Gentileschi, Italian baroque painter from the 17th century,
have been scheduled as guest speakers on a panel titled, “Women
Artists: Strategies for Survival.” As the women display slides of their
work, the sparks begin to fly. Confronted with conflicting philosophies,
each woman attempts to take control of the evening’s agenda.

Hildegard, whose art is multi-disciplinary and created in an all-women

collective environment, has strong words for the woman who does
her art for hire. Likewise, Artemisia, who struggled hard to achieve
the same status and independent income as her male
contemporaries, has a lot to say about the so-called virtues of poverty
and humility. She resents the accusation from women that she is “just
like a man,” because of her commercial success.

But the debate takes a personal turn when the women are pressed to
defend their positions. Both women are compelled to reveal secrets
of their childhood, secrets which have shaped their strategies for
survival. Hildegard’s parents banished her to a convent at the age of
eight, where she was walled up for ten years in a cell, a form of
extreme religious renunciation she “practiced” as an anchoress. Her
rationalization of this trauma into a form of spiritual blessing requires
an elaborate mythology about a mystical calling and special
relationship to the deity.

Artemisia was raped at sixteen by her father’s colleague who had

been hired to give her lessons on perspective. Her possessive and
covertly incestuous father exposed her to a humiliating public trial,
which involved an examination of her vagina and the administration
of torture to determine if she were telling the truth. Artemisia has
devoted her life to downplaying the role of gender in her life and in
her art.

As the women struggle to justify their choices, choices which

invalidate each other’s work, they find themselves exposing the
contradictions in their own lives. The panel ends on a dramatic high
note, as the audience is recruited in the debate about strategy for
women artists in patriarchy.

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Two women
One hour
Single set (podium)

HARRIET TUBMAN VISITS A THERAPIST

A One-Act for Two Women

• Winner, Festival of One-Acts, Love Creek Productions, NYC.

• Nat’l Winner, Perishable Theatre Women’s Playwriting Festival,
Providence, RI

“… marked with originality and cleverness as well as

thoughtfulness in both conception and execution... In a time in
our society when slavery and its sustaining effects are never
acknowledged and outright denied, it is good to read a
contemporary version of the classic freedom fighter— Harriet
Tubman.” —Aishah Rahman, playwright and Associate Professor in
Brown University’s Creative Writing Program.

“The discussion [following the play]… lasted well over an hour,

a record for such events at the theatre.”—Vanessa Gilbert,
Perishable Theatre, Providence, RI.

“The play has the power of anger.” —The Providence Journal, RI.

“… a satirical, funny and yet poignant and serious look at the

abuse black women took in those days, with some interesting
comparisons to today.” —The Warwick Beacon, RI.

“vivid and evocative… ” —The Providence Phoenix, RI.

“Arthur’s performance [as Tubman] was so powerful and raw

that the audience literally could not stop cheering and clapping
at the end.” —Our Weekly.Com, Los Angeles.

“Playwright-editors Lane and Shengold have assembled five

full-length plays, 11 shorter plays, and excerpts from four plays,
all written for actors under 30… Jessica Goldberg’s Refuge,
Jenny Lyn Bader’s None of the Above, and Carolyn Gage’s

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Harriet Tubman Visits a Therapist are all standouts… fresh and
gripping…” —Library Journal, reviewing Under Thirty: Plays for a
New Generation (Vintage)

Harriet Tubman Visits a Therapist is a gripping confrontation between

two women who share the same oppression, but whose definitions of
survival are in direct conflict.

Harriet Tubman, suspected of planning an escape on the

Underground Railroad, has been sent to the Therapist for an
evaluation. The Therapist, another African American woman, warns
Harriet about the dangers of radical action. Harriet accuses the
Therapist of colluding with the enemy in the guise of practicing
therapeutic intervention.

As the Therapist attempts to convince Harriet of the benefits of

accepting the things she cannot change and learning to live one day
at a time, Harriet uncovers the Therapist’s secret - a secret which will
give her access to the information she needs.

The plot takes a sudden twist during one of Harriet’s spells of sleeping
sickness, and in resisting the suggestions which justify the
Therapist’s ideology, Harriet discovers a source of spiritual support
rooted in her own activism.

Two women
20 minutes
Single set

ENTR’ACTE
OR THE NIGHT EVE LE GALLIENNE WAS RAPED
A One-Act Play

In October 1923, Eva Le Gallienne was raped in her dressing room

during the Broadway run of Liliom, a play in which she performed the
role of Julie Jordan, the battered girlfriend of an abusive, alcoholic
carousel operator.

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Entr’acte takes place in the private sanitarium on the night of the rape,
after Eva has checked herself in. In a state of post-traumatic hyper-
arousal, she waits for a “friend” to arrive.

The friend is Mimsey Benson, Eva’s former lover and fellow-actor,

who left her ten months earlier for the security of a heterosexual
marriage. Eva has not seen Mimsey since the breakup.

In this charged environment, the two women confront their feelings

for each other, and Mimsey, who had lost her identity in her former
relationship with Eva, walks a tightrope between compassion for the
young women and the detachment necessary to protect herself from
Eva’s overwhelming neediness.

This play is a tour-de-force for a young actor (Eva is twenty-three). In

the space of the thirty-minute drama, Eva runs a gamut of extreme
dissociative states as she moves through denial, bargaining, rage,
and grief to finally arrive at acceptance of her losses. Making rapid
transitions, she is alternately the abandoned lover, the imperious
Broadway star, the enraged child, the dazzling performer, the terrified
victim, the skillful seductress, and the visionary entrepreneur who will
go on to found the Civic Repertory Theatre.

The interpersonal drama of the two women is punctuated by

interactions with two of the nurses on the staff, one of them an adoring
fan of Eva’s and the other a hard-nosed pragmatist. Balancing
between the two poles represented by the nurses, Eva and Mimsey
struggle to create a new relationship toward each other and toward
their art.

Four women
Thirty minutes
Single set

THE PARMACHENE BELLE

A One-Woman, One-Act Play

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.

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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 guns.

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.

1 woman
35 minutes
Single set

THE PELE CHANT

A Civilized Conversation in One Act

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“Mahalo nui for your play. It is splendid, clever, and sets the
characters in an imaginary world that is, nevertheless, quite
believable. The mark of superb craftsmanship…! Ku’e,
ku’e,ku’e! [Resist, resist, resist!] — Haunani-Kay Trask, leader of
the Hawai’ian Sovereignty Movement.

The play opens in 1969, with Dr. Evelyn Bateman, a white college
professor, interviewing Miss Lydia Aholo, a ninety-two-year-old
Native Hawaiian. Miss Aholo is the hanai (“adoptive”) daughter of
Queen Liliuokalani, the last queen of Hawai’i. Dr. Bateman is
preparing to write the first Western biography sympathetic to the
Queen, detailing her overthrow by the US government.

During the course of the interview, Miss Aholo reveals that the Queen
entrusted her with a mission before her death. She asked her
adoptive daughter to answer the question that tormented her at the
end of her life: “What did I do that was so wrong that I should lose my
country for my dear people?”

Dr. Bateman is shocked by the question, insisting that the Queen was
a helpless victim of a colonial effort that had its beginnings before she
was even born. Dr. Bateman is adamant that the Queen could have
done nothing to change the course of history. Miss Aholo is equally
insistent that there is an answer to the Queen’s question and that the
future for Native people depends on an understanding of this answer.

As the Western liberal historian and the Native woman struggle with
the metaphysics of language, colonization, and victimization, their
collaboration begins to unravel. When Dr. Bateman recounts an
anecdote about a visit to Queen by three Native kahunas, or
priestesses, urging her to join them in an act of civil disobedience
involving the recitation of the Pele Chant, Lydia finds the answer to
the Queen’s question—and with it, the secret of spiritual
decolonization.

Two women
Single set
Thirty minutes

THE DRUM LESSON

48
 A One-Act For Women Drummers

This one-act for five women drummers explores the dramatic uses
of the language of the drum.

In the play, the drum teacher Aisha has lost control of her class: One
student is improvising with no attention to the directives from the
teacher; another student who keeps losing her rhythm has voluntarily
moved herself out of the circle; a third student has not even unpacked
her drum.

Confronted with the lack of unity in the class, Aisha explains that the
only way she knows how to teach is through the drum: It teaches her
and it teaches through her. As tensions among the students escalate,
one of the drummers breaks into chaotic drumming. At first, this is
perceived as an act of aggression, but it quickly becomes evident that
something more serious is happening. When the student fails to
resond to attempts at verbal or physical intervention, Aisha tries to
reach her via the drum.

Her initial attempts at “call-and-response” are rebuffed, but slowly the

teacher manages to establish a dialogue with her runaway student.
As Aisha “drums her down from the ledge,” the other students,
chastened by this lesson in alternative language, rejoin the circle.

Five women who can drum

Single set
Twenty minutes

THE RULES OF THE PLAYGROUND

An Anti-War Play in One Act

“To introduce the futility of a nation state and ethnic-based

separation in such a simple and effective way is brilliant...” —
Laura Lampela, co-editor of Femspec, Vol. 5.

Five women, all mothers, have gathered in a classroom of their

children’s middle school to take part in an experimental, new program
designed to eliminate playground violence. Experts from international

49
“think tanks” and peacekeeping forces are training the women on how
to analyze playground dynamics in order to detect the class, ethnic,
and racial inequalities among the children that are, in theory, the
sources of conflict. On the chalkboard, there is a diagram of the
playground, which has been divided up into “safety zones” in
accordance with sophisticated formulas intended to balance out
these inqualities. The program’s focus is emphatically on confronting
social imbalances, not individual behaviors, and, to facilitate this
focus, the women have been forbidden to look out the window at the
playground. In fact, the blinds are shut.

As the women enter the classroom to wait for the trainer, they register
varying degrees of discomfort and distrust. Evidently something
traumatic has happened a week earlier, at the first session of the
training, but, because of the injunction against focusing on individual
behavior – and especially against “male-bashing,” they are reluctant
to talk about it.

An enthusiastic newcomer joins the group, excited to have found a

school for her daughter where the problem of violence is being so
openly addressed. Her enthusiasm changes to confusion as she
learns that the program prohibits any form of disciplining of the
children, insisting that all conflict be resolved through the rules of the
playground.

As the newcomer’s concerns escalate, the women’s self-censorship

begins to break down, and it is revealed that, a week earlier, one child
was shot on the playground and another was raped. The newcomer
reacts with disbelief and then alarm, as the sounds of gunfire and
screaming are heard from the playground. She is intercepted as she
attempts to raise the blinds, and flees the room, accusing the other
women of being insane. After she leaves, the mother of the raped girl
begins to question the absence of a gender analysis amid all the
sophisticated formulas for equality on the chalkboard. She calls for a
division of the playground that would provide a safety zone for girls.
This proposal is met with hysterical denial, and the play ends with the
women whose losses have been the greatest joining forces to close
the partially-opened blinds and to reinforce the attention to the rules
of the playground.

This is a scathing social satire, along the lines of Shirley Jackson’s

electrifying short story “The Lottery.” The Rules of the Playground
demonstrates how the everyday social conditioning of women is
exploited as a means of enabling the perpetuation of male violence.

50
Women’s collective failure to identify war as an unacceptable
expression of male aggression, and our acceptance of it along male-
identified terms of “political expedience,” is depicted as nothing less
than complicity—a complicity that renders us victims and betrayers.

Six women
Single set
Twenty-five minutes

THE EVIL THAT MEN DO: THE STORY OF THALIDOMIDE

A One-Act For Radio Or Stage

This one-act was originally written as a radio play, but it can also be
produced as a stage drama.

The Evil That Men Do (title taken from a Shakespeare play) is the
story of Dr. Frances (“Frankie”) Kelsey’s fight to keep thalidomide out
of America. The play traces the development of her friendship with
Dr. Barbara Moulton, who resigned from the FDA and was testifying
against the agency’s corruption at the time when Frances was hired.
In her courageous act of befriending a whistle-blower, Frances was
laying the foundation for her subsequent battles with the drug
companies.

The play unveils the conspiracy between the German manufacturers,

the American distributor, and the officials in the FDA to pressure
Frances to issue a license for “the sleeping pill of the century.”
Frances plays for time against the good-old-boy network, while the
horrifying evidence mounts that thalidomide, prescribed as a cure for
morning sickness, causes severe birth defects.

Since 1960, the date of the thalidomide “scare” in this country,

companies whose products are designed for women have continued
to follow dangerous and deceptive practices. In 1991, a Texas jury
awarded $33 million in damages to the parents of a child born with
birth defects as a result of taking Bendectin, an anti-nausea drug,
which had been on the market since the 1950’s with no testing for its
effect on human fetuses.

51
Nestle persisted in promoting their infant formulas in Third World
countries, despite the proof that it was responsible for infant
malnutrition, disease, and death. Proctor and Gamble engaged in an
extensive cover-up of the fact that their Rely tampon was responsible
for toxic shock syndrome, even after the deaths of many women. And
A.H. Robbins dragged its heels for more than a decade, fighting
settlement awards for victims of their deadly

Dalkon Shield IUD, a birth control device that has left women sterile,
crippled, and dead. The most recent example of the medical
exploitation of women has been the scandal over the use of untested
silicon breast implants.

The Evil That Men Do is an old, old story—but one which points a
moral for a happier ending.

Three women, eight men

Thirty minutes
Single set

A LABOR PLAY
A One-Act Propaganda Piece

A Labor Play is a satirical piece about what might happen if surrogate

mothers become a commodity in the corporate world. The two chief
executive officers are concerned about the bad publicity which might
result from a worker’s desire to gain control over the distribution of
the goods. (The mother has decided to keep the baby.)

The collision of male dominance with the women’s value system is

violent, and the scenario, in light of the “Baby M” case, might not be
as far-fetched as it seems.

One woman, two men

Fifteen minutes
Single set

52
 HETEROSEXUALS ANONYMOUS
A Twelve-Step Spoof

Five women come together for a regular meeting of Heterosexuals

Anonymous, an organization designed to help women overcome their
unmanageable addictions to men. The women share their
experiences of automatically deferring to men, of battering, of rape,
of sex discrimination, and of inability to relate to the males in their
own families.

The women, having admitted that they were powerless over their
addiction to men, work through the steps of the program towards
recovery. The steps include Step Two: “Believing that a power greater
than men can restore us to sanity” and Step Four: “Making a
searching and fearless moral inventory of all the men in our lives,
including fathers, brothers, husbands, and sons.”

A lighthearted spoof, the play nevertheless points up the political

analysis which is lacking in tradition 12-Step programs, a lack which
often leads women to believe personal growth is possible without
social change.

Five women
Twenty minutes
Single set

RADICALS
A One-Act About Women in the Anti-War Movement

Radicals is a play about straight women during the late sixties. The
play illustrates the damaging effects of compulsory heterosexuality
on women who must express affection for each other through each
other’s boyfriends. An explosive play, examining the roots of violence
between women.

In Radicals, two women live together; one is an activist in the anti-

war movement, and the other is apolitical - but paying all the bills. The
women’s inability to communicate their feelings for each other leads
them towards increasingly destructive and competitive roles. Finally,

53
Margo invites a fugitive radical, wanted for killing a policeman in
Miami, to stay in their apartment. Sexual and political tensions
become entangled, and the war comes home.

The play moves swiftly as a political thriller for a close ensemble

group. The idealistic rhetoric of the characters stands in stark contrast
to their day-to-day choices. Radicals interweaves the personal with
the political, never losing sight of the fact that these self-styled
radicals are no more respectful of the life around them than the
“enemy” they oppose.

Two women, two men

Forty-five minutes
Single set

THE BOUNDARY TRIAL OF JOHN PROCTOR

A One-Act Play

The Boundary Trial of John Proctor takes up where Arthur Miller’s

Crucible leaves off. This play opens with Miller’s anti-hero stumbling
into the boundary lands where women’s lives are lived, a territory so
marginal to patriarchy that it has escaped by Proctor and his creator’s
awareness.

The women accused of witchcraft in Miller’s play are assembled in a

sewing circle. We meet Elizabeth, Proctor’s pregnant wife, and
Abigail, the employee he sexually exploited. We also meet Tituba, the
formerly enslaved Carribean housekeeper; Sarah, the town baglady;
Martha, the intellectual; and Rebecca, the town matriarch.

The women are assembled to make baby clothes for Elizabeth’s

child. They ask John Proctor to join their circle and take up the
knitting. Balking at “women’s work,” John discovers that he is unable
to assert his male supremacist values in the Boundary of women’s
existence. He is as marginal here as the women were in his world,
and his discovery that witches are real results in an explosive verdict.

Six women, one man

Thirty minutes
Single set (bare stage)

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 THE LADIES’ ROOM

A Play in Six Minutes

The scene is just outside a ladies’ room in a shopping mall. Rae, a a

seventeen-year-old butch, has just been misidentified as a man, and
a woman has gone to report her to mall security. Rae, humiliated and
insulted, is hurling insults. Her girlfriend, Nicole, is oddly
unsupportive.

When Nicole discloses the reasons for her silence, Rae is

overwhelmed emotionally, and she makes a surprising choice when
her accuser returns.

Two teenaged girls

Six minutes
Single set (bare stage)

PATRICIDE
A Play in One Minute

Patricide is a one-minute monologue by a woman of any age, race,

ethnicity, physical ability, sexual orientation, or class background—
who telephones her father and confronts him with her memory of his
sexual abuse of her.

More than a novelty piece, this monologue provides actors with the
opportunity to run an intense gauntlet of peak emotions in the space
of sixty seconds: panic, terror, disorientation, relief, euphoria.

One woman
One minute
Bare or elaborate set, with telephone

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 THE P.E. TEACHER
A One-Act Play

The P.E. Teacher is a suspenseful thriller exploring the interface of

misogyny, racism, and homophobia in the public schools.

Dana Willets, an African American lesbian, has just been hired to

teach P.E. classes at Rosa Parks Middle School. She is replacing
another lesbian teacher who resigned suddenly in mid-term under
mysterious circumstances. Dana’s attempts to discover the reason
for this resignation are frustrated by the vice principal, who lectures
her on the need to be a team player.

Dana recognizes the English teacher Anne, who is white, as a former

lover from college, and as she presses her for information about the
P.E. teacher, Anne becomes increasingly nervous and
uncommunicative. An African American girl is assaulted in the halls
by male students, and the school nurse, guidance counselor, and vice
principal engage in a cover-up of the incident, focusing their attention
on the attitude of the victim.

As information about the P.E. teacher’s resignation begins to surface,

Anne is scapegoated for her recent breakdown, and a gun that was
concealed in the sofa of the lounge resurfaces in the violent resolution
of the drama.

Five women, one man, two girls

Thirty minutes
Single set

BITE MY THUMB
A Skirmish in One Act

“… a great success… the most popular and attended play… we

even had to add two extra performances to meet the demand.”
—Matilda Marshall, Malmö University, Sweden.

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Two “gangs” from rival Off-Off Broadway productions of Romeo and
Juliet meet in an alley to rumble, sixteenth-century style. Female-to-
male transgender meets lesbian cross-dressing, and lesbian butch
squares off against male machismo in this swashbuckling gender-
bender!

A male “Romeo” from a traditional production shows up at the stage

door of an all-women theatre company, challenging their “Romeo” to
come out and fight like a man. The fact that this cross-dressing,
female Romeo has stolen his former girlfriend by offering her the role
of Juliet only fans the flames of his indignation. When Juliet’s Nurse,
a lesbian butch, takes up his challenge, however, Romeo finds
himself outclassed in the martial arts. On the brink of surrender, he is
rescued by his own masked “Mercutio,” who takes on the Nurse in a
dazzling display of sword-fighting techniques.

In another surprise twist, “Mercutio” is unmasked, revealing his

identity as a transgender male. Accused of being a woman by his
former buddy, he is also attacked by the lesbian butch for alleged
lesbo-phobia. Meanwhile, the female “Romeo,” threatened by the
butch’s superior fighting skills attempts to put her back in her place
as a character actor. The butch, however, joins forces with the
transgender actor, with the result that both find themselves expelled
from their respective companies.

Having pronounced a plague on both their houses, the butch

launches into a tender coda about the unsung heroism of those who
renounce traditionally assigned gender roles. She and the
transgender male commit themselves to the creation of a new kind of
theatre that can support their stories.

Two males, three females, one transgender male

Thirty minutes
Single set

THE POORLY-WRITTEN PLAY FESTIVAL

Just Possibly the Worst One-Act Play Ever Written

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“Absolutely the BEST of the "insider" plays about
(community) theatre we have read. A satire exposing
whilst exemplifying all the elements of bad playwriting.”—
International CringeFest, NYC.

Five members of a play selection committee have gathered in the

Green Room to choose the plays for their Festival of Poorly-Written
Plays. The artistic director begins with a review of the more common
criteria for a bad play: blatant exposition and contrived names for the
characters. He then suggests that they all go around the table and
introduce themselves and say a little something about themselves—
blatant exposition if ever there was. As he calls on Hedda, the literary
manager, and Mrs. Bracknell, the benefactress, it becomes obvious
that the folks around the table all have contrived names.

And so it goes—the committee enacts every broken rule of

playwriting in the course of their wrangling over their selections of bad
plays. These broken rules include the use of asides, characters who
unaccountably reverse their positions, overly-complicated
relationship histories, unrealistic set requirements, mysterious
strangers, phony disguises, implausible explanations, significant
action that takes place offstage, reference to scenes that have been
cut from the script, and the setting up of the expectations of the
audience only to disappoint them.

This is a hilarious “actors nightmare” for playwrights, guaranteed to

delight audiences, whose attempts to follow the action are constantly
frustrated by the dramaturgical liberties of this “poorly-written” play.
The incoherencies and inconsistencies build to a frantic climax, as
the artistic director, faced with a plethora of plot difficulties, resorts to
the cheesiest playwriting device of all.

Three females, three males

Seventeen minutes
Single set

THE OBLIGATORY SCENE

A One-Act Play for Two Women

58
Ostensibly arguing about The Taming of the Shrew, a lesbian couple
come to grips with their own marital struggles and break their
deadlock around the issue of sex.

Vivey and Dru are both graduate students, living together in a

committed relationship. Vivey’s distress over being assigned to direct
a scene from Taming of the Shrew triggers an argument with her
partner about the sexual politics of the play. Dru makes the case that
the play is subversive, with Petrucchio exaggerating his gender role
in order to mock it. Vivey resists this interpretation until Dru cites the
dialogue describing the wedding night, where it is apparent that
Petrucchio does not have sex with Katharine. On the contrary, he
delivers a mocking lecture on abstinence.

On the strength of this argument, Vivey accepts that the play might
indeed be about a companionate, or even “passing” marriage. She
redirects the conversation to address the lack of sex in their own
relationship. Dru, a survivor of child sexual abuse, is reluctant to
discuss the subject.

As the argument escalates, the two agree to role-play an exercise in

which Dru plays an alien from another planet, describing her
experience. The exercise, set up to pathologize Dru, backfires on
Vivey, and she discovers that she is more accurately the alien from
another planet. Dru’s experiences are universal and pandemic
among women, and Dru’s insistence on incorporating that
understanding into her practice of intimacy shatters Vivey’s
complacency and self-righteousness.

Deeply in love, but deeply self-assertive, both women struggle to

avoid playing out the traditional “obligatory scene” of a break-up or a
sexual stalemate. The ending of the play points to a radical
transformation the holds the promise of healing for both.

Two females
Twenty minutes
Single set

THE GAGE AND MR. COMSTOCK

A Ten-Minute Monologue

59
Formidable editor, author and Suffragist Matilda Joslyn Gage, 67, lies
in bed ripping up congratulatory notes from her well-wishers about
the recent publication of her lifework, Woman, Church, and State.

Her book, an impeccably-researched, comprehensive indictment of

the historical misogyny of the christian church, is intended to start a
revolution, and Gage is distressed by the polite responses from those
who already share her views. In an attempt to stir controversy, she
has sent a copy to a conservative member of the local school board,
donating the book to the school library. She expresses her frustration
that she has received no response.

After a mini-lecture on the custom of “throwing down the gage,” she

vents her frustration about the fact that challenges by women are so
seldom taken seriously. Gage’s exhaustion changes to exhilaration
when she comes across a letter from Anthony Comstock, the
notorious author of the national “Comstock Laws” that banned birth
control and instituted strict censorship in arts and literature.
Apparently, the school board member sent the book to him, and he
has written to Gage threatening to press criminal charges against
anyone who attempts to place the book in the hands of children.

Gage is delighted. She exposes the hypocrisy of Mr. Comstock and

tells the appalling story of his persecution of Ann Lohman, a woman
who was incarcerated for having performed abortions, and whom he
pursued after her release, entrapping her in the sale of contraceptives
to undercover agents. Lohman, unable to face the humiliation and
trauma of a second incarceration slit her own throat the morning she
was to appear in court for the second trial. Gage scores Comstock for
his callous indifference to Lohman’s death, a direct result of his
persecution of her.

Gage is delighted that Mr. Comstock has taken up her challenge and
she gleefully anticipates the prospect of escalating the controversy
surrounding her book, noting that, if all goes as she plans, Woman,
Church and State should make it onto the Pope’s list of banned
books.

One female
Ten minutes
Single set

60
 ‘TIL THE FAT LADY SINGS
A Play with Music in One Act

Music by Andrea Jill Higgins (and Puccini, Verdi,

Mozart, Wagner, and Gluck)
.

Sara, a young woman in her early 30’s, lies in a hospital bed, waiting
to be taken down to surgery for a gastric bypass operation. Sara
weighs more than 250 pounds, and she is convinced that, without the
surgery, she will never be able to realize her ambition to become a
professional opera singer. Her years of training and graduate school
will have been wasted.

Sara’s partner, Gillian, is opposed to the surgery, and when she

shows up in the hospital room, an argument ensues. Realizing that
their conflict is causing Sara distress, Gillian apologizes and asks
Sara to sing “Vissi d’arte,” a favorite aria by Puccini. When a nurse
arrives to administer a sedative, however, Gillian renews her
opposition and exits.

Under sedation, Sara experiences a series of dreams which

incorporate elements of well-known operas with concerns about the
impending surgery and her experiences with fat oppression. The
dream sequences include a comic interlude as a Rheinemaiden, an
encounter with the “Ghost of Callas Past,” a confrontation with a Met
director who insists on a graphically realistic finale of La Traviata, a
duet with Papageno, confusion between Madame Butterfly’s hari-kari
and gastric bypass surgery, and a scene from Gluck’s Orfeo ed
Euridice in which Gillian plays the tormented troubadour on a mission
to retrieve his love from the Underworld—a mission which must be
achieved without turning and looking back at her.

At this point, Sara wakes up, but she is still confused by the drugs.
Mistaking Gillian for Orfeo, she insists that Gillian not look at her,
because that is the only way to lead her out of hell. Gillian expresses
a concern that perhaps Sara’s immersion in operas that reflect morbid
male fantasies might be coloring Sara’s perceptions. She points out
that what is making life hell for Sara is not the way she sees Sara, but
the way other people see her. She challenges Sara to give a voice to
her body, instead of trying to give a body to her voice.

61
Sara considers the suggestion and the play ends with her singing the
aria, “This Body Is My Song,” a radical love song between a diva and
her body.

Two female opera singers (soprano and contralto), one non-singing,

walk-on role
Thirty minutes
Single set

THE A-MAZING YAMASHITA AND THE MILLENNIAL

GOLDDIGGERS
A Transnational, Postmodern Magic Show for the Millennium

Yamashita is a female magician, who promises us an evening of

entertainment, where she will personally escort her audience
“through the secret tunnels and nubiferous passageways of a post-
colonialist, global economic maze, more hidden than King Solomon’s
Tomb, more baffling than the riddle of the Sphinx and more
impenetrable than the Great Pyramid of Khufu.”

In fact, her Assistant has run away, and the A-Mazing Yamashita is
compelled to recruit volunteers from the audience for her classic acts
of levitating a woman, sawing a woman in half, and causing a woman
to vanish in a magic cabinet, the Cabinet of GATT (yes, as in “General
Agreements on Tariff and Trade”).

In the course of her highly unorthodox magic, the Assistant returns

via the Cabinet, to warn the audience that Yamashita is actually
trafficking the women who volunteer for her magic acts. Yamashita,
assuring the audience that this is all part of the act, produces a young
Thai woman who has “chosen” to prostitute herself, illustrating the
“magic” of GATT in generating market conditions that support the
disappearing of women. Entering the Cabinet herself, Yamashita
manages to convince the Stage Manager that there is no need for
intervention. To reassure the audience, she calls on a Professor who
responds to audience concerns with postmodern “deconstructions” of
all their questions.

62
When her Assistant takes matters into her own hands, telephoning
the police, Yamashita must disappear them all and then undertake
the mass hypnosis of her entire audience. Explaining how the
synaptic association of inequality with sexual arousal will eliminate
any sense of discomfort about the evening, and, in fact, greatly
enhance the audience’s ability to participate in the new global
economy, Yamashita announces her intention to achieve this effect
via displays of pornographic imagery. At this point, the Stage
Manager pulls the electrical plug and the fate of the evening lies in
the hands of the audience.

The real trick is to apply the lessons learned to the economic sleight-
of-hand that globally erases women’s productivity, disappears over a
hundred million women and girls a year, and commodifies the culture
via increasing dissemination of pornography.

Seven women
One man
Two teenaged girls, one Asian
Three adults, any gender
Thirty minutes
Single set

THE COUNTESS AND THE LESBIANS

A One-Act for Three Women

“… an intelligent and witty look at the parallels between the Irish

struggle and the struggle for gay rights… As the play unfolds,
tensions between the characters surface not only because of the
tricky love-triangle, but also due to the more contentious and
telling political sympathies and views of the women… cleverly
written and lucid… ” [Five-star rating] —The Metro, Dublin,
Ireland.

“… a spirited dramatization of women’s involvement in the

Easter Rising… The historical elements of the play are
intriguing… engaging a broader narrative of feminist history.” —
Irish Times, Dublin.

63
“Michael Collins meets The L-word? As unlikely as this sounds,
Carolyn Gage’s provocative new one-act, The Countess and the
Lesbians, pulls it off beautifully, while still managing to be that
brave and sometimes daunting thing, an intellectual play about
political issues… the graceful pacing, creative
characterisations, and flashing good humour of this highly
intelligent script means that it’s entertaining instead of polemic,
a rousing good piece of theatre with a thoughtful message… an
important play and a highly satisfying piece of theatre in its own
right.” —Queer ID, Dublin.

“… some great one liners and wonderful comic construction

peppered throughout a solid feminist argument that few could
fault about recognition and identity… professional, perfectly-
pitched and thought-provoking… The Countess and the
Lesbians is a fascinating deconstruction of a time of Irish
heroism, posing questions you’ll be talking about for days
afterwards.”—Gaelick, [online magazine], Ireland.

“If Countess Markiewicz is sometimes overlooked, Eva is

completely ignored in history. Before we did the play I had never
heard of Eva Gore-Booth, but these women, these lesbians are
part of our history and I think that the full houses prove that
people are willing to re-educate themselves.” —Gina Costigan,
Ballindoon Productions, Dublin.

Kathleen is directing a play about Countess Constance Markiewicz,

after her arrest for her participation in the Easter Rising. The play is
based on the writings by the Countess, by her sister Eva Gore-Booth,
and by her sister’s life companion Esther Roper.

Kathleen’s partner Grace is performing the role of Eva, while

Kathleen plays the Countess. Their real-life relationship mirrors the
dynamic between the sisters: Grace, who despises conflict, plays a
supporting role to Kathleen, who is multi-talented and very ambitious.
Nan, playing the role of Esther is in love with Grace, and she becomes
increasingly aggressive in challenging Kathleen’s directorial and
dramaturgical choices.

When Kathleen fires Nan from the play, Grace produces excerpts
from a play by Eva Gore-Booth, The Death of Fionavar, and requests
that they do a reading of them. In the play, Eva has used a tale from
Irish mythology to illustrate her political differences with her sister.

64
Fionavar, the Queen’s daughter, is so upset by the sight of bloody
corpses, she falls dead—even though her mother was the supposed
victor.

As the women wrestle with their pride and their options, they make a
radical choice to continue to cling to the wreck of the rehearsal
process until there is some light. The play, like the love of Ireland
among the historical characters, is a thing that unites them and that
transcends their ego, and as they continue to inhabit the characters,
the actors discover that the script becomes a vehicle for expressing
and transforming their emotions. As the template for their former
relationships is shattered, they use the Irish play as a temporary
structure from which they can begin the process of rebuilding.

Three women
One hour
Single set

SOUVENIRS FROM EDEN

A One-Act Play
Souvenirs from Eden is a play about a survivor struggling to make
peace with memories of betrayal and abandonment. In the play, the
ghost of the lesbian poet Renée Vivien returns to a memory of her
summer in Bar Harbor, Maine, (then named “Eden”) in 1900, when
she was the guest of her lover Natalie Barney, who would later
become a celebrated salonist. Both women were very young and very
wealthy.

Renée’s attempt to revisit the memory in order to gain closure is

disrupted by both Natalie and the Stage Manager. The Stage
Manager manipulates props and impersonates a dangerous visitor
from Renée’s past, and Natalie perpetually goes “off script,” refusing
to allow Renée to demonize her.

The memory continues to recycle, as Renée imposes different

endings on it. Finally, the deeper betrayal by her mother surfaces,
and Renée is offered an authentic opportunity to gain closure.
Instead, she escalates her blaming of Natalie, and Natalie responds
by appropriating the narrative. She describes her first lesbian crush

65
in Eden, and the innocence of her memory antagonizes Renée who
fails to recognize it as the key to closure and healing. Natalie walks
out, as Renée resorts to her familiar abuse of sedatives and alcohol.
The memory starts to loop again, unassimilated and inassimilable.

Three women
Single set
25 minutes

BLACK EYE
A Knockout in Nine Minutes

The year is 1953 and the setting is a middle-school principal’s office

and the waiting area outside the door. Amanda, a thirteen-year-old
tomboy, is waiting disconsolately on a bench. She sports a brand new
black eye, and has apparently been fighting.

Her P.E. teacher, Miss Marshall, has been summoned to a

consultation about the incident with the principal. On the way to his
office, she checks in with Amanda, and the audience understands
that she has been coaching the girl on her fighting skills.

The principal, Mr. Kent, is expelling Amanda and is hoping that Miss
Marshall will be willing to convey the news to both Amanda and to her
mother, as Miss Marshall is the girl’s favorite teacher. Miss Marshall
is angered by the decision, arguing that the fight was provoked by the
boys’ homophobic harassment.

When Mr. Kent attempts to terminate the meeting, Miss Marshall

admits that she has taught the girl how to defend herself, and she
informs him that she believes in fighting. She threatens to “out” Mr.
Kent to the school board if he follows through on the expulsion. Mr.
Kent is confident that she will not do this, as he knows that she is also
in a same-sex relationship. Miss Marshall manages to trump his ace,
however, and he agrees not to expel Amanda.

66
Leaving the office, Miss Marshall has a final, triumphant and
subversive interaction with her student.

A woman, a girl, and a man

Single set
Nine minutes

HERMENEUTIC CIRCLEJERK

A Postmodern Exposé

The play opens in a café in Paris, in 1977. Michel-Henri, a middle-

aged academic, sits at a small table with a bottle of wine. Jacques-
Pierre, his colleague, rushes in with the news that the Parliament has
just rejected a petition they both signed, to abolish the age of consent
and decriminalize “consenting” relations between adults and children.
Jacques-Pierre is distraught, blaming Michel-Henri for having
persuaded him to sign it.

Michel-Henri argues that it was the right thing to do, and that he,
Michel-Henri, can no longer settle for a life of shame and hiding, but
must take a public stand for who he is. Jacques-Pierre, drinking
heavily, begins to agree with him, becoming more and more
inappropriate as the evening wears on.

Agreeing with Jacques-Pierre that the rejection of the petition has left
them both vulnerable, Michel-Henri hits on the idea of founding a new
philosophy that will confuse people and undermine the moral
objections to pedophilia. He appeals to Jacques-Pierre to help him
create a special language of obfuscation for the movement.

Jacques-Pierre refuses, telling Michel-Henri he intends to repair his

reputation by saying that Michel-Henri made him sign the petition. At
this point, their interaction moves into a perpetration scenario, with
Michel-Henri overriding Jacques-Pierre’ protests and Jacques-Pierre
becoming more and more submissive. The play ends with his
capitulation, and postmodernism is founded.

Two adult males, one adult woman of color (narrator)

67
Single set
20 minutes

LACE CURTAIN IRISH

A One-Woman, One-Act

Thirty-five years after the infamous Fall River ax murders, a 61-year-

old Irish woman, working in her kitchen in Anaconda, Montana, opens
a newspaper to read about the death of the alleged murderer, Lizzie
Borden. The woman is Bridget Sullivan, the Borden’s former maid.

As she reads the article, Bridget shares with the audience her rage
toward her former employer’s daughter, whom she believes
attempted to frame her for the murders. She has been haunted by a
recurring, mysterious dream that begins with lace curtains and
believes she was a witness, but that she has blocked the memory.

Drinking heavily, she shares with us what she remembers of that

fateful day: how, in spite of being sick with food poisoning on the
hottest day of the year, Mrs. Borden had still ordered her to wash all
the windows in the house.

As she speaks, Bridget is stretching lace curtains on blocking frames.

The frames have small pins around the edges for attaching the lace,
and Bridget, in her anger, keeps pricking her fingers and staining the
margins with blood.

After the trial, Lizzie sent Bridget a substantial amount of money, with
the condition that she leave the US and return permanently to Ireland.
Bridget believes Lizzie must have seen her face at the window, and
that the offer was an attempt to buy her silence. Bridget brags about
returning under another name to Anaconda, Montana, a prosperous
mining town run by Irish immigrants.

Declaring that Lizzie was a “tommy” (a lesbian), Bridget accuses her

of courting her with kindness, in an attempt to set her up for the
murders. Bridget’s childhood with fourteen siblings was a harsh one,
and, wanting to escape her mother’s fate, she has emigrated with a
dream of having an independent life.

68
Holding up a frame of lace, she is surprised by the sudden retrieval
of a memory from the day of the murders. Approaching the parlor
window, she did not witness the murder, but saw instead the
reflection of her own face, resembling the face of her mother. This
memory triggers a string of other memories that contradict her version
of events for that day. Increasingly confused, Bridget begins to realize
the true identity of the murderer and understand that the woman she
has demonized for thirty-five years nearly sacrificed her life in order
to save Bridget.

One woman
Single set
30 minutes

THE GREATEST ACTRESS WHO EVER LIVED

A One-Act Play

A young, closeted reporter arrives at the dressing room of stage and

film star Nance O'Neil. The year is 1930 and O'Neil is playing Irene
Dunne's mother in the film Cimarron.

The reporter is aware of the rumors about Nance's lesbian affairs,

and Nance is aware that the reporter is closeted. As the two women
spar over issues of authenticity and reputation, Nance makes the
intriguing proposal to give the reporter the story of "the greatest
actress who ever lived" in exchange for the opportunity to interview
the reporter about her life.

The reporter reveals the fact that she is divorced with a daughter, and
Nance begins to tell the story of her affair with alleged ax-murderer
Lizzie Borden. In the telling of this story, Nance claims to have
discovered the identity of the real murderer, as well as the deception
that Lizzie practiced throughout her life in order to protect this woman.

The women share a moment of intimacy before the reality of their

respective lives claims their allegance.

Two women
Single set
30 minutes

69
 LITTLE SISTER
A One-Act Play

A tribal police officer struggles with her lesbian partner over issues of
loyalty and definitions of “family” and “tribe.

The play opens with an argument between Theresa, who has just had
to arrest her brother-in-law, and Jess, who is engaged in creating a
graphic novel about the Chiricahua warrior Lozen. Theresa raises a
number of concerns about assimilation into white culture, as well as
questions about the accuracy of oral histories taken down by white
historians.

Later, we meet Theresa’s niece, Onawah, who is twelve and

experiencing intense “gender dysphoria.”

Jess, who has a trauma history, experiences ongoing PTSD, which

becomes an issue when Onawah arrives unexpectedly in the middle
of the night. Jess, startled, responds with a display of violence that
terrifies Onawah. When Theresa attempts to explain about PTSD,
Onawah becomes even more disturbed, for reasons of her own.
Later, in the night, Onawah overdoses on Jess’ meds and is taken to
a hospital.

At the hospital, it is revealed that the girl has been a victim of sexual
abuse. When suspicion falls on Onawah’s stepfather, her family
responds with denial and counter-accusations, and Jess finds herself
needing to confront some of her worst demons in order to show up
for Onawah.

An episode from Jess’ graphic novel about Lozen provides the key
that unlocks the healing for the child, as well as for Jess. The play
ends on a note of hope rooted in a fierce history of resistance in a
culture that considered Two Spirit people sacred and the well-being
of the child a tribal priority.

THE GREAT FIRE

70
 A Play in Ten Minutes

The year is 1947, and the resort town of Bar Harbor on Mount Desert
Island in Maine is on fire. All roads off the island blocked by the fire,
the terrified residents were forced down to the harbor, where every
boat that could be commandeered was picking up the stranded.

In this play, the Randall siblings, with a chambermaid, are waiting on

the beach for a boat. The Randalls belong to one of the most socially
prominent families on the island, and the older sister is struggling with
maintaining her equilibrium on shoes never intended for sand and the
possibility that they might not have adequate insurance to cover their
losses. The wounded and alcoholic brother, just back from the war in
Europe, views the fire with cynicism, delighting in the destruction of
an elite way of life with which he can no longer identify. The thirteen-
year-old daughter is curious but unattached to the event, and she
regales the family with her "disappearing coin" trick.

The maid, an African American woman, breaks the frame of the play
when she is left behind, sharing with the audience some of the
appallingly classist history of the island and linking it to the
underemployment of actors of color on Broadway.

The play resumes when the younger daughter returns, offering her
alliance with the former chambermaid. Together they explore the
price of this alliance in terms of transforming privilege.

Two women, one man, one girl

Single set
Ten minutes

THE CLARITY OF PIZZA

A Short, But Messy Play

Jordy, a lesbian, and her straight friend Miranda are eating pizza.
Jordy takes a photo of Miranda with cheese on her chin, and they get
into a fight about deleting the photo. Jordy accuses Miranda of being
phony around her boyfriend, and Miranda accuses Jordy of abusing
her class privilege. The women get into an argument about who is
more authentic, and Jordy expresses her love for Miranda. There is

71
an awkward confrontation followed by a stalemate. Miranda discovers
a creative strategy for getting the friendship back on track.

Three minutes
Single set
Two women

VALERIE SOLANAS AT MATTEAWAN

A One-Act Play

In late summer 1968, two pioneering activists in the budding

Women’s Liberation Movement visit Valerie Solanas at the
Matteawan State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. It has only been
two months since she shot Andy Warhol. They are on a mission to
recruit her as a spokeswoman for their movement. Valerie has other
things on her mind...

Three women, one man

Single set
30 minutes

PLANCHETTE

A One-Act Play

It is the first nor’easter of the season in October 1879, Portsmouth,

New Hampshire. Mollie Clifford is thirteen and her parents have
arranged for another young person to stay over for the night, because
they are away.

The visitor is Jude, also thirteen. Jude has just arrived from Denver,
which, in 1879 is still very much the frontier. Jude wears boys clothing
and does not have much use for the “steady habits” of the East.

72
Mollie has been traumatized by the infamous murder of two women
on the Isles of Shoals, and Jude has survived a fire that was set by
her mentally ill mother. In addition to their experience with trauma,
both are also carrying adult secrets. Mollie is attracted to women, and
Jude identifies as male.

Two young people, both 13, one born female with traditional gender
presentation and the other born female with masculine gender
presentation.
Single set
30 minutes

HEAD IN THE GAME

A One-Act Play

A powerful short play about prostitution.

The play opens outside the Boxing Girls Gym. In the Boxing Girls
Gym, clients (nearly all male) pay by the hour to “spar” with the
women who work there, the “boxing girls.” In this form of “boxing,” the
boxing girls are not allowed to hit back or defend themselves. The
client pays to “win.” In the eyes of the law, the activity is recreational
and considered just another form of boxing.

In the play, a reporter and her intern, who is also a woman, are
infiltrating a Boxing Girls Gym in order to do a story for Gentlemen
Magazine. While they are there, a policeman shows up to investigate
a report of a man beating up a woman. When he realizes where he
is, he stops asking questions. The victim of the beating runs on,
begging for protection. The owner of the gym, showing more concern
for the client’s interrupted service, sends another “boxing girl” to finish
“sparring.”

The head of the gym sends the policeman off with a stack of Boxing
Girls business cards, and she counsels the victim not to pursue the
matter. She reminds her that she has a daughter at home she can
barely support, offers her drugs, and sends her to the Makeup Room
to prepare for another “round.”

73
Meanwhile, the intern has become increasingly upset by what she
sees as blatant violence against women. The play ends with a
surprise twist.

4 women, 1 man
Single set
15 minutes

AT SEA

A 10-Minute Play
Two old lesbian butches in their 80’s have escaped from a nursing
home at night, stolen a sailboat, and are planning a double suicide
out on the ocean.

As the play opens they are both smoking pot and are very high. They
keep bursting into hysterical laughter as they prank each other other,
attempt to discuss the serious issues around their mission, and
wrestle over a tin of caviar.

Best friends for many decades, Lee worries that Micky might be on
the trip just to keep her company, not because she is really done with
her life. As this conversation breaks down, a Coast Guard searchlight
sweeps over the boat.

Hiding from the light, Micky comes to a realization about her motives,
and this causes a change in strategy for Lee. The play ends on a note
of wild exuberance as the two women “come about.”

2 old women
Single set
9 minutes

EASTER SUNDAY

74
 A One Act Play
It’s a sunny Easter morning in Morningside Park, New York, 1960.
Del and Flora, a working-class butch-fem couple, are on their way
home from a service at St. John the Divine. They are laughing,
singing, and enjoying their love when Del begins to pressure Flora
into telling her “coming out” story. Flora becomes distressed and
evasive.

Later, they are on the doorstep of a brownstone in Greenwich Village.

Del wants Flora to meet a mysterious someone. It turns out that this
someone is Marty Mann, the founder and spokeswoman for the
National Council on Alcoholism. Del knows her from AA meetings.
Del is trying to buy a summer cottage in Cherry Grove, the lesbian
summer colony outside of the city, but the owner is refusing to sell to
her because of class prejudice. Del is hoping that Marty Mann will put
in a good word for her. Flora, badly burned by her experiences with
the upper class, becomes very upset when she discovers Del’s
mission, but Del make a case for staying and rings Marty’s doorbell.

When Marty appears half-dressed and clearly hungover, Flora exits.

Del invites herself in, and the scene shifts to the interior of the
apartment. Marty is in the middle of a two-week binge, and, in spite
of Del’s prompting, she refuses to contact her sponsor or reach out
for help. Marty’s position is that she is too important to the recovery
movement to have it known that she has relapsed.

Del, the dry drunk, and Marty, the bingeing drunk descend into a
spiral of emotional and near-physical violence, which ends when
Mary injures herself. Del performs an intervention on herself, calling
her sponsor and leaving for a meeting. Marty, alone with her disease,
reaches out to a friend to take care of her while she recovers from
“the flu.”

A play about shame and redemption.

3 women, 30's-55
3 scenes
1 hour

75
 52 PICKUP

A 10-Minute Play
Janiya, a young woman is in the hospital on a mandatory suicide
watch after her third attempt. She is visited by her ex-girlfriend Cil. As
they both struggle with the aftermath of the attempt, the two women
arrive at a dynamic that might be a game-changer.

2 women, early 20’s.

Single set
10 minutes

LIGHTING MARTHA

A Play about Jean Rosenthal

The play opens in April 1969, after the final dress rehearsal for Martha
Graham’s 35th season opener at the City Center. Legendary lighting
designer Jean Rosenthal, dying of cancer, arrived in an ambulance
and on a gurney for the final lighting check. She has just left to return
to the hospital. Her life partner and lighting assistant, Miki (Marion)
Kinsella, is alone on the stage. A lighting technician, Ben, notices her
behavior and expresses his concern. Miki is agitated and displacing
her anger on Martha Graham for allowing Jean to attend the
rehearsal. Jean forbidden Miki to talk about her disease or her dying,
and Miki grief and resentment have reached the breaking point. Ben
leaves Miki with a pint of whiskey. She turns on the ghost light, lies
down on the stage, and falls asleep.

The ghost of a healthy, younger Jean shows up, and Miki challenges
her over what she perceives as excessive loyalty to Martha Graham.
Jean’s explanations only exacerbate Miki’s rage, and, in desperation,
Jean, pulls the plug on the ghost light and retreats to the shadows. In
the darkness, the women begin again, and this time, Miki is able to
understand the forces that have shaped her partner and her choices.
She arrives at an appreciation of the quality of her partner’s defects,
and Jean is able to show her love for Miki in the only way she knows
how.

The play is a reflection on denial and dying, intimacy and artists,

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seeing and being seen, and—of course—on light.

2 women, 40’s and 50’s; 1 man, 60’s

Single set (bare stage)
30 minutes

MISS LE GALLIENNE ANNOUNCES THE NEW SEASON

A Monologue
A young Eva Le Gallienne, 33, is holding a press conference at the
Civic Repertory Theater in New York to announce the opening plays
for the 1932-33 season. After five wildly successful years, she had
closed the theater in 1931 to take a yearlong sabbatical, and this
press conference is announcing her return. However, Eva’s “year off
“ has been filled with trauma—a gruesome, near-fatal gas explosion
in her home, and an international scandal surrounding her girlfriend’s
divorce.

Eva announces at the outset “no pictures please,” and is managing

to deflect questions about the fire, when suddenly a photographer
sets off a flashbulb. This small explosion triggers a post-traumatic
panic response in Eva, and she loses her composure. From this point
on, her public persona begins to unravel as the need to be present
for her experience wrestles with her desire to present a professional
persona.

1 woman
Single set/bare stage
10 minutes
______________________________________________________

FEMALE NUDE SEATED

A One-Act Play
The play opens at midnight in a bedroom in a student rooming house,
London, 1917. Mainie Jellet, 21, is having a nightmare. She wakes
up screaming, turns the light on, and uncovers her easel to check the
painting she has been working on. Still upset, she makes an attempt
to drink a jar of paint thinner. She is interrupted by fellow student Evie
Hone. The two women, both Dubliners, do not know each other.

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Evie helps clean up the turpentine and brings a bottle of brandy. As
the two women get to know each other, Mainie tells a horrific story of
sexual harassment by one of her professors, who today is rumored
to have been Jack the Ripper.

Mainie is in the middle of a serious identity crisis. Her year in London

has opened her eyes to the truth about the “Great War,” and also
about the Easter Rising. Raised in a Protestant, Unionist household,
she learned to view Catholics as heathens, Irish rebels as traitors,
and the war as a heroic defense of the glorious British Empire. Mainie
is also beginning to question the traditional canon of male painters,
and especially representational art, which she considers voyeuristic.
Because of her radicalization, she feels she cannot go home.

Evie Hone, as an orphan and survivor of polio, has her own

experience of losing home. She, too, is at a turning point and has
made plans to enter a convent. Tempers flair and Evie challenges
Mainie to paint her disabled body. Mainie, embracing the challenge,
breaks through to a new form of artistic expression emphasizing
spiritual principle over outward appearance. Recognizing their need
for each other, the two women agree to leave London and move to
Paris together to seek out teachers who are breaking tradition.
Instead of Evie entering a convent, the women decide to form their
own community of women, women artists who share their values.

Two women
Single sett
40 minutes

ON THE OTHER HAND

A One-Act Puppet Play

On the Other Hand is a meta puppet play, where two puppets, Lorna
and Judy, become gradually aware of the external forces that are
controlling and manipulating them.

Lorna is the first to begin to sense the presence of the Puppeteers.

She has begun to hear the voices of the Puppeteers at night. When
she expresses her fears to her friend Judy, Judy becomes alarmed

78
that Lorna might be experiencing symptoms of mental illness. She
talks Lorna into visiting a doctor.

At the visit to the doctor’s office, the Doctor is actually a Puppeteer

for Lorna. Lorna, lying on a couch and facing away from the Doctor,
is not aware of this. When Lorna displays increasing resistance to a
regime involving a range of pills, the Doctor orders her turn around.
Lorna, confronted with the sight of the Doctor’s hand literally inside
her, begins to scream.

The next time Judy and Lorna meet for coffee, Lorna is heavily
drugged and Judy begins to question her diagnosis. Judy
experiments with staying awake in her box at night, and this results
in her Puppeteer removing her and her box.

Lorna goes to meet Judy for coffee again, but this time there is a new
puppet who insists that she is Judy. Loyalty to her friend causes Lorna
to break out of her drug-induced apathy. She bites her Puppeteer.

The final scene takes place on the scrap heap, where both Lorna and
Judy face the fears and the hopes of life beyond the Puppeteers.

Four puppeteers
Puppet theatre set
Ten minutes

THE INTIMACY COORDINATOR

A Short Play

Lights come up on the interior of a room in a present-day brothel.

Jewel, wearing a robe, is preparing for an assignation with a client.
There is a knock on the door and Stan enters. He is late and angry
that she will not extend the appointment. As he undresses, there is
another knock on the door and Jewel goes to see who it is. It’s
Marsha, who claims she is an intimacy coordinator that the brothel
has hired to ensure the safety of clients and staff.

As Marsha starts to explain that intimacy coordinators are hired in

theatre and film to protect the performers, Stan interrupts, protesting

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that the sex is not going to involve scenarios or anything dangerous—
in other words, no theatre. Marsha points out that Stan will be having
sex, but that Jewell will actually be performing the role of a woman
who is desirous of his attention. Stan becomes angry and Jewell
makes him leave.

Jewell, seizing the contents of Marsha’s briefcase, demands to know

who really hired her, and Marsha reveals she is a former prostitute.
Jewell calls her out on her “sex policing,” insisting that consent is
already institutionalized in the brothel.

Marsha invites Jewell to work with her as an intimacy coordinator,

explaining how this work is the key to changing public attitudes about
prostitution. Jewell finds herself unable to argue with Marsha’s logic
and agrees to join her.

2 women, 1 man
Single set
10 minutes

STARPATTERN
A One-Act Play

During the mass shooting at the University of Texas at Austin

on August 1, 1966, the first victim outside the Tower was
Claire Wilson, an eighteen-year-old student in her eighth
month of pregnancy. She lay wounded on the broiling hot
pavement of the South Mall for over an hour, next to the body
of her dead partner, Tom Eckman, knowing that her baby had
also died. People on the periphery of the shooting could see
that she was still alive and struggling, but they were afraid to
step into the line of fire of the sniper, who continued his
rampage for ninety minutes.

Suddenly Rita Starpattern, a twenty-year-old art student, ran

out onto the South Mall, lay down next to Claire, and
continued to engage her in a conversation until she was
rescued. Later, Claire affirmed her belief that Rita, by keeping

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her conscious, saved her life.

Both of these women were exceptionally courageous, and this

play is intended as a tribute to them and as an exploration of
the feminist and matriarchal beachhead they managed to
establish and sustain in a liminal space between life and
death, pinned down by the imminent threat of extreme
patriarchal violence.

Two young women, 18 and 20.

Four males, 17-22
Single set

BRETT HEARS THE MOUNTAIN GODS

A Monologue

This monologue is made up entirely of excerpts from the

writings of Dorothy Brett, adapted for stage.

Taos painter Dorothy Brett, 73, breaks her silence about her
trip to Italy with D.H. Lawrence and the two traumatic nights
when he attempted to make love to her. Shattered by his
rejection of her, Brett remembers how, returning alone to Taos,
she was healed by the wisdom and the values of the
indigenous people around her.

1 woman
12 minutes
Single set

THE ANNUNCIATION TO MARY

A One-Act Play

Two graduating seniors, Sam and Emily, who have been best
friends since kindergarten, meet to rehearse the annual

81
Christmas pageant at their all-girls’ prep school. Sam has been
recently diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum, but she
has not shared this with Emily. She is intensely anxious about
being abandoned when Emily leaves for college, and has
decided to start a fight that will allow her some control over the
end of the friendship.

Sam has planned a disruption of the annual Christmas pageant

that will turn it into a pro-choice protest. Emily, who has been
honored with the role of the Virgin Mary, accuses Sam of
jealousy and sabotage. Sam, in turn, accuses Emily of
participating in a patriarchal pageant that undermines the rights
of consent.

In the course of the conflict, Sam reveals her diagnosis, and

the conversation takes a deeper turn as Emily admits to being
inauthentic in all of her friendships for the sake of being liked.

Returning to the trope of a pageant, they script a new ending

that marks the beginning of a deeper friendship.

Two girls, 17
Single set (bare stage with chairs)
30 minute

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 BOOKS
THE SECOND COMING OF JOAN OF ARC AND SELECTED
PLAYS [2009]

National Winner, Lambda Literary Award in Drama.

“… an exciting page-turner that is at once challenging and

informative… inventive and thought-provoking take on women’s
lives.”—HerStoria, Wallasey, UK.

“… penetrating, gutsy and often painfully funny.”—John

Manderino, playwright and author.

This is a brand new collection of Gage’s best historical plays,

including the award-winning title work, a play that has been
performed around the world for more than two decades.

In Artemisia and Hildegard, Gage explores the tensions between

assimilation and separatism in the explosive encounter on an
academic arts panel between 17th century baroque painter Artemisia
Gentileschi and 12th century abbess Hildegard von Bingen. She
revisits this theme in her widely-produced play, Harriet Tubman Visits
a Therapist. Tubman, suspected of planning an escape, has been
sent to the Therapist, another African-American woman, for an
evaluation. Radical activism meets one-day-at-a-time therapism in
this play that won the Off-Off Broadway Festival and was produced
at the Louisville Juneteenth Festival.

The one-woman plays include The Last Reading of Charlotte

Cushman, a full-length play about the l9th century performer whose
lesbian affairs were a dramatic as her cross-dressed roles on the
stage. The Parmachene Belle is a one-woman show about Cornelia
Crosby, a 19th century Maine hunting guide with a crush on Annie
Oakley, who was a survivor of torture and child sexual abuse. This is
a play about outcasts, misfits, and survivors—Crosby, Oakley, and
Sitting Bull—who all struggled to invent ways to continue in the face
of shattered dreams and hopeless prospects.

The other plays include Calamity Jane Sends a Message to Her

Daughter and Cookin’ with Typhoid Mary.

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 NINE SHORT PLAYS

“As Carolyn Gage is one of the best lesbian playwrights in

America, the book 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.

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

84
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.

THREE COMEDIES

A collection of three award-winning, full-length comedies.

The Anastasia Trials in the Court of Women: A farcical, audience-

interactive courtroom drama, where the audience must serve as
judge and jury in a case against the five women who betrayed the
Grand Duchess Anastasia Romanov, the last surviving daughter of
the Tsar of Russia. Complex ethical questions on a set of folding
chairs.

Sappho in Love: A lesbian “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” with the

goddesses of celibacy, love, and marriage competing for Sappho’s
attention amid poetry contests, meteor showers, lessons on lesbian
love-making, romantic trysting, mix-ups and disguises. Wet and wild
romantic comedy!

Thanatron: A rollicking farce about the world’s most dysfunctional

family, a doctor with a penchant for assisted suicide, and a lesbian
housekeeper with a crush on her employer. An over-the-top comedy
about leaving, being left, and what it takes to stay.

85
 THE TRIPLE GODDESS

A collection of three full-length dramas:

The Goddess Tour: It’s a dark and stormy night at a remote inn on
the Burren of Western Ireland, as six American women -- strangers
to each other (or are they?)—gather for a tour of ancient goddess
sites. A murder mystery exploring potentially deadly mother-daughter
dyads, played out amid ghostly sightings of lost children and pre-
Celtic rituals involving various aspects of the goddess

Ugly Ducklings: Two counselors at a summer camp struggle with

their love against a backdrop of homophobia. Scenes with the
campers depict with chilling accuracy the cruelty of girls towards
those they perceive as outsiders. Powerful lesbian drama!

Esther and Vashti: A romantic drama set against a backdrop of war

in ancient Persia. A young Hebrew woman and her former lover, the
Queen of Persia, struggle against their personal and political
differences to form an alliance against a common enemy.

BLACK EYE AND OTHER SHORT PLAYS

A collection of ten short plays.

Black Eye: Subtitled “a knockout in nine minutes,” this short play

packs a punch. The year is 1953, and Amanda is a 13-year-old
tomboy who has been sent to the principal’s office for fighting the
boys who have been lesbian-baiting her. When the principal, who is
in the closet, moves to expel her, Amanda’s lesbian P.E. teacher
shows that she is just as willing to fight as her student. A taut play,
filled with surprises.

The Ladies’ Room: A five-minute play about two lesbian teenagers

in a ladies' room at a shopping mall. The butch has just been
mistaken for a man, and mall security is on the way. Her girlfriend,
because of her own history,is conflicted about offering support.

The A-Mazing Yamashita and the Millennial Gold Diggers: “The

transnational, postmodern magic show of the millennia!” The A-
Mazing Yamashita promises to levitate a woman, cut a woman in two,
and disappear a hundred thousand women—all through the wizardry

86
of modern pharmaceuticals, the presto-chango of sexual com-
modification, and the wonders of the Great Cabinet of GATT.

The Rules of the Playground: Six mothers of middle-school

children come together for a special training on playground violence.
Focusing on perfecting the rules of the playground to eliminate
inequality, the women, literally, turn a blind eye to the real cause of
violence. A chilling interrogation into the ways women teach each
other to enable male violence.

The Boundary Trial of John Proctor: A one-act featuring the

notorious anti-hero of Arthur Miller’s Crucible, and the women he
exploited. John Proctor, finding himself in the boundary lands of
patriarchy after his execution, encounters a second trial—this time by
the women. Proctor, who does not believe in witches, scrambles
desperately for context as he is tested by his ex-wife, his mistress, a
formerly enslaved Caribbean woman, the town baglady, the town
bluestocking, and the town matriarch.

The Evil That Men Do: The Story of Thalidomide: Fast-paced radio
drama, suitable for stage production. The conspiracy of the German
drug manufacturers and the FDA unfolds like a murder mystery, as
Dr. Frances Kelsey, suspecting birth defects, stalls for time against
mounting pressures to license sale of “the sleeping pill of the century.”

A Labor Play: Kafka-esque one-act about a multi-national

corporation in the business of selling babies. “Business as usual”
comes to a halt when one of the workers strikes for control of the
distribution of manufactured goods. In other words, she wants to keep
the baby.

Heterosexuals Anonymous: A playful send-up of the 12-step

movement. Five women in recovery from their addictions to men,
convene at their weekly meeting. The format includes personal
testimonies and the reading of the 12 Steps of HA.

The P.E. Teacher: A one-act about misogyny, racism, and

homophobia in the schools. A new teacher is hired to replace a
lesbian teacher who resigned under suspicious circumstances. When
a former lover turns up on staff, it becomes evident that the
scapegoating is a cover for the school’s institutionalized violence
against women and girls.

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The Gage and Mr. Comstock: A monologue by feminist foremother
and Suffragist, Matilda Joslyn Gage, in which she sets the bait for
Anthony Comstock to ban her book, Woman, Church and State, a
comprehensive exposé of the historical misogyny of the christian
church.

TAKE STAGE!
How to Direct and Produce a Lesbian Play

“In Take Stage!, Carolyn Gage has given us an invaluable

resource for producing lesbian theatre in our communities—
brilliant in attention to the details of theatrical production,
uncompromising in its treatment of the human and economic
factors involved, firmly grounded in her experiences as a
playwright, director, and producer, and throughout informed by
a solid, lesbian-centered politic that prioritizes class, race, and
accessibility in specific, practical ways. This book is so full of
information about organizing, fund-raising, and the dynamics of
lesbian groups that any lesbian engaged in grassroots politics
should own at least one copy. WARNING! If you loan it out, Take
Stage! is a book that probably won’t come back!” —Julia
Penelope, co-editor of The Original Coming Out Stories, For
Lesbians Only, and Lesbian Culture: An Anthology.

“… chock full of new ideas and common sense about choosing,

mounting, publicizing, and surviving the live theatre
experience… cracks open the mysteries of the successful
theatre venture… Most important, the book addresses the
complex underpinnings of accountability, leadership, and
collaboration in the differently structured world of women-run
groups… a real resource guide… concise, readable, and
inspiring.” —The Lesbian Review of Books, Hilo, HI.

“… a kick-ass primer on self-producing, with timelines, sample

press releases, flyers, and every other kind of helpful thing. ...
Her coverage on “victims and victimizers” and the effects of
traumatized people who dissociate and create backstage
“drama” is psychologically spot on. I wish I had read this years
ago. It would have saved me many the headache and “blame

88
game” in dealing with struggling small groups. It’s a unique
book on producing plays… It just went onto my top shelf.” —
Linda Eisenstein, author of Three the Hard Way and Marla’s
Devotion.

The first comprehensive “how-to” book for lesbians wanting to

produce or direct lesbian theatre. 300 pages of everything you would
ever need to know, from script selection to striking the set, about
putting on a lesbian play.

The author has been the founder and artistic director of three theatre
companies, including a studio art theatre, a large community theatre,
and a radical feminist theatre. She has worked with lesbian theatre
collectives, toured and performed at women’s festivals and
conferences for the last six years, and worked with lesbian producers
all over the country.

Conversational and anecdotal, TAKE STAGE! is written for the

lesbian who has no previous experience with theatre or lesbian
organization. In addition to the chapters on auditioning, rehearsals,
picking the script, booking the space, assembling a staff, etc., the
book also includes special chapters on the unique challenges to
lesbians creating theatre.

TAKE STAGE! includes information on how to challenge the “isms” -

looksism, racism, ageism, ableism, fat phobia, and all the other
prejudices that are entrenched in mainstream theatre. TAKE STAGE!
also looks at co-dependence in women and the problems this can
cause in an organization staffed by volunteers. The author takes on
the class structure and hierarchy that can develop within a theatre,
and she proposes concrete strategies for developing alternative
systems.

The fifty-page appendix contains sample contracts, audition forms,

light plots, budgets, and schedules. A gold mine of practical forms
and charts!

TAKE STAGE! is filled with examples from real lesbian theatre

groups, examples of situations which arose when the structure of the
company was ambiguous, when the roles were poorly defined, or
when the communication was not clear.

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SCENES AND MONOLOGUES FOR LESBIAN ACTORS: REVISED
AND EXPANDED
The First Scene Study Book for Lesbians

“No playwright has created as amazing a pantheon of historical

lesbian characters as Carolyn Gage. Her book, Monologues and
Scenes for Lesbian Actors, provides a sumptuous feast of
possibilities for both seasoned and budding lesbian performers
to use portraying a full range of emotion and political
perspectives. Carolyn Gage is a national lesbian treasure.” —
Rosemary Keefe Curb, editor of Amazon All Stars: 13 Lesbian Plays.

“Her dozens of strong, funny, determined characters are a gift

to lesbian actors everywhere... She also has a wicked sense of
humor… ” —Bay Area Reporter, San Francisco.

“… remarkable strength and universality… moving and

courageous… the collection will appeal to a readership beyond
lesbian actors, because through careful research and
deliberation Gage has created many stories of women’s lives. In
her writing, she makes one face truths one might normally try to
avoid.” —Lambda Book Report, Washington, DC.

“Gage’s imagination and her richness of dialogue are a

wonderful offering to a theatre community that could certainly
use a push in the direction of representing us all on the stage.”
—On the Purple Circuit, Los Angeles.

“Strong contributions such as Gage’s should indeed help

alleviate the long-standing situation of lesbians having to learn
the craft of acting by impersonating heterosexuals…
recommended for libraries supporting drama programs
(schools as well as academic) and public libraries in towns and
cities with community theatre.” —Newsletter of the Theatre Library
Association, NYC.

“… a diversity of roles to stimulate the most adventurous

lesbian performer… this text enables the reader to see the
impressive range of her work as well as to supply a needed

90
sourcebook for auditions and scene work in one volume.” —The
Lesbian Review of Books, Hilo, HI.

My copy of Carolyn Gage’s Monologues and Scenes for Lesbian

Actors is dog-eared from frequent rereading and lending it to my
sister-poets. In this book, Gage has given queer women theatre
artists more than an array of sincere, intense, and electrically
wit-loaded scenes and monologues. I’m thinking in particular of
those from The Last Coming of Joan of Arc, The Last Reading of
Charlotte Cushman, and Ugly Ducklings. Gage showcases a
historical pantheon of lesbian movers, shakers, and culture-
makers, announces a lesbian playwriting and performance
tradition, and locates herself and her work in both. Gage shouts
and sings a confirmation, invitation, and challenge to the rest of
us.” —R.L. Nesvet, Playwright and Theatre Critic.

Finally! A book for lesbians who are tired of “passing” at auditions and
in acting classes and workshops! Here at last, from one of the most
talented and inventive contemporary playwrights, is a book of thirty-
two monologues and sixty scenes by, for, and about lesbians. Here
are dramatic portrayals of our coming-out stories, our strategies of
resistance, our rescue of survivors of sexual abuse, our passions, our
torture, our triumphs. The settings are historic and contemporary,
ranging from the goddess temples of Lesbos to the locker rooms of a
softball team.

This collection includes scenes with characters taken from lesbian

history: Jane Addams, Charlotte Cushman, Joan of Arc, Calamity
Jane, Sappho, Babe Didrikson, Benedetta Carlini, Renée Vivien,
Natalie Barney, and Eva LeGallienne. It also includes women from
history whose sexual orientation may or may not have been
documented, but whose survival strategies resonate with strategies
of lesbians. These strategies include the separatism of Hildegard von
Bingen, the confrontation of sexual violation in the art of Artemisia
Gentileschi, the liberation struggle of Harriet Tubman, the repression
and denial of Louisa May Alcott, the resistance of Mary Mallon
(“Typhoid Mary”).

The book also includes material from plays protesting the sexual
colonizing of women through the institutions of heterosexism:
prostitution, surrogate motherhood, incest, rape, marriage, and the
“slow-motion violence” of economic and political disenfranchisement.
Two of the plays deal with the historic closeting of teachers in the

91
school system, and one play specifically confronts the constrictive
gender roles of the traditional canon.

Many of the scenes reflect contemporary lesbian culture with all of

our in-house conflicts and contradictions. These scenes take place
on the ball field of a women’s softball team, on a sound stage for a
lesbian erotic film company, in a cabin on a 1970’s-style lesbian land
collective, at the waterfront of a girls’ summer camp, on the
soundstage of a lesbian concert, in a lesbian nightclub, in the
bedroom.

STARTING FROM ZERO

ONE-ACT PLAYS ABOUT LESBIANS IN LOVE

A collection of plays dealing with historical themes, about lesbians in

love, including:

THE GREATEST ACTRESS WHO EVER LIVED

A closeted reporter arrives in the dressing room of veteran,
bisexual stage and film star Nance O'Neil, and as Nance shares
the details of her affair with alleged ax murderess Lizzie Borden,
the two women share a moment of intimacy.
SOUVENIRS FROM EDEN
The ghost of lesbian poet Renée Vivien returns to a pivotal
memory from the summer of 1900, when she was in Bar Harbor
(“Eden”), Maine, with her lover Natalie Barney. She wrestles with
scenarios of traumatic memories in an attempt to find closure.
LACE CURTAIN IRISH
Thirty-five years after the infamous Fall River ax murders, an Irish
woman, working in her kitchen in Anaconda, Montana, opens a
newspaper to read about the death of the alleged murderer,
Lizzie Borden. The woman is Bridget Sullivan, the Borden's
former maid. A gripping solo one-act that turns history on its
head!
THE COUNTESS AND THE LESBIANS
Three lesbian actors are rehearsing an historical play about
Countess Markiewicz and the aftermath of her participation in the
Easter Week Rising in Dublin. The play is about her political
differences with her sister, who was a pacifist. As the women take

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 up the issues of the play, the power dynamics of their own lesbian
relationships are called into question.
‘TIL THE FAT LADY SINGS
A play with music for two women in one-act. A fat woman in her
20’s is in the hospital awaiting surgery for a gastric bypass
operation she believes necessary for her dream of singing opera
professionally. Her partner is against the surgery, and as the
patient goes under sedation, she finds herself and her partner in
a series of bizarre dreams where her situation incorporates
elements of operas by Wagner, Gluck, Verdi, Mozart, and
Puccini.
DEEP HAVEN
A dramatic adaptation of the lesbian writings of beloved 19th-
century New England writer Sarah Orne Jewett. Including
excerpts form her novels, diaries, letters, and poems.
SINCE I DIED
A dramatic adaptation of a 19th century, New England short story.
A woman who has recently died attempts and fails to
communicate with her lesbian life partner, who is unable to see
her.

LIKE THERE’S NO TOMORROW

MEDITATIONS FOR WOMEN LEAVING PATRIARCHY
“I was more deeply moved and ‘sinspired’ by Carolyn Gage’s
new book than by anything else I’ve read in years. Like There’s
No Tomorrow has qualities rarely seen in current “theory.” It is
a work of burning, uncompromising vision and daring… a
beacon of hope in these chilling times of compromise, timidity
and apparent defeat. This book is Pure Fire. It is true and
therefore extreme… a stunning manifestation of Radical Lesbian
Feminist Courage and Genius.” —Mary Daly, Radical Feminist
Philospher and author of Pure Lust, Gyn/Ecology, and Outercourse.

“Many feminists are brilliant, but how many are wise? Playwright
Carolyn Gage is a radical lesbian feminist who is wise, as this
book demonstrates … uncompromising and tough-minded, yet
inspiring… ” —Carol Anne Douglas, off our backs, Washington,
DC.

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 “I've had a copy of the manuscript for less than a month, and it
is covered with underlined passages and post it notes. Already,
I find myself referring to it constantly, incorporating it into what
I need to know about the world.”—Elliot, Women’s Books Online.

“I am replete or content. I feel as if I have had a most satisfying

feast. I have been reading this book off and on for about two
weeks, and although I am a quick reader, this is a book to have
by your bedside or your favorite chair to think on as you read
passages as needed.” — Mary Atkins, Uppity Women Magazine.

Like There’s No Tomorrow takes no prisoners. This is a meditation

book that will clear your political sinuses and blow out the cobwebs
of fuzzy “live-and-let-live” thinking. These annotated quotations may
be read as a series of mini-lectures, as inspirational meditations, or
as a Cook’s tour of women’s history.

Hot role models! Sor Ines de la Cruz, Chrystos, Sappho, Saadawi—

and a host of unsung heroines!

Cool strategy! How to lay in for a siege, turn the tables, seize the
offensive.

Suspenseful stories! Donaldina Cameron’s daring rescue of

prostituted Asian girls, Fannie Lou Hamer’s courageous resistance to
police brutality, Lillian Hellman’s defiant stand at the McCarthy
hearings.

Words of wisdom Quotations urging women to hold a grudge,

cherish our anger, cultivate our rage, mind other people’s business,
and live Like There’s No Tomorrow!

These meditations are written with a light touch, but a deep politic.
For the woman who finds “one day at a time” a formula for despair—
finally a meditation book for those in search of radical healing.

THE GAIA PAPERS

In Search of a Science of Gaia

“I think Gage is onto something here by combining the process

of healing used by Mary Baker Eddy with her radical feminist
activism… The Gaia Papers has the potential to begin a

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transformative conversation about spirituality, healing and
women…”—Dr. Deidre Michell, author of Christian Science:
Women, Healing, and the Church.

The Gaia Papers is a fifty-page tract that applies a lens of radical

feminist metaphysic to explore the age-old question of the nature of
evil.

Confronting the gendered nature of violence against women and

children and the patriarchal systems that promote this violence, The
Gaia Papers interrogate the place of “the goddess” in this dismal
cosmogony.

Following a line of metaphysical logic pioneered by Mary Baker Eddy

in the 19th century, The Gaia Papers invite the reader to draw
conclusions about the nature of gender based on a radically feminist
spirituality… conclusions that may defy the evidence of the material
senses.

Without falling into the trap of transcendental or enabling

philosophies, The Gaia Papers outline a mode of inquiry intended to
aid the reader in working with the metaphors in which they find
themselves.

13 PROPOSITIONS
FOR REWIRING THE LESBIAN BRAIN

“These 13 Propositions are my "keep it simple stupid" outline. It

is an invitation for me to seriously examine what hasn't been
working. It is the outline I need to begin to re-wire my brain. I
appreciate that they are proposals, not requirements… that the
change and healing is left to me. It is gift…”—V.E.

A thirty-six page “electrician’s manual” for reprogramming key

concepts about intimate relationships.

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 SERMONS FOR A LESBIAN TENT REVIVAL

“The Lesbian Tent Revival—inspiring, encouraging, truth-

telling, amazing, comedic, must-reading for all Radical
Feminists. I never had so much fun as at the Tent Revivals at
Michigan, being in a crowd of like-minded, laughing, singing,
applauding and shouting-out with Sister Carolyn. She's pure
genius. Buy This Book. You won't be sorry.” —Susan Wiseheart.

“… by far the best book I've read all year. It may even qualify as
the best feminist book I've read—ever… Each sermon led to
another unique discovery within myself—some sermons forced
me to think about subjects I had never wanted to address, while
other sermons expanded my views on topics I thought I already
knew enough about. Reading Sermons for a Lesbian Tent
Revival was a remarkable journey to undertake, as a woman
and as a reader, and I cannot recommend this book highly
enough. If you are a woman—heterosexual, bisexual or
lesbian—you must buy this book and discover Sister Carolyn's
Sermons for yourself. It's a journey you won't regret taking.
Blessed be!”—N.E. Francis, Sacramento Arts & Entertainment
Examiner.

“Sisters, I have seen the light and felt the spark. Sister Carolyn's
tent revivals have saved my soul from the hellfire of
obfuscation… Hallelujah!”—Amy McLoughlin, Ann Arbor, MI

“The LTR rocked my world! In August at the MWMF my Aussie

mates agreed that The LTR was our highlite and we left
wanting more—much more. Clearly our weary les fem souls
needed saving! Each morning Sister Carolyn delivered a
riveting, inspiring and humourous sermon that made us sit up
and think, laugh, cry.”—Georgina Abrahams, Sydney, Australia

“Sisters! I have been SAVED!”—Callie

“I know that you brought back full circle what … is in danger of

being lost.”—Maria Karpinski

“In these sermons, Sister Carolyn gives voice to women's

experiences - the ones we feel in our gut every day, but don't
have words for. She paints vivid pictures with her words and
illuminates the world in a way that will never leave your mind…

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Every woman will be moved by these sermons; every lesbian will
be transformed by them.”—Amy Lewis, Denver, CO

My sister sent me Sermons for a Lesbian Tent Revival. People

often have a way with words, or a way with ideas, but seldom
both. I read Gynecology, Native Tongue, Cyborg Manifesto etc.
but I can't say I was racked with laughter to balance the agony. I
read your book in one sitting, like a glutton. It was the best read
in years. You rock, Sister:)—Helena Saayaman, Pretoria, South
Africa.

For the first time in print! Thirteen sermons delivered by Sister

Carolyn of the Sacred Synapse at her notorious “Lesbian Tent
Revival.” Reviving the spirit of sisterhood from those heady days of
the early feminist movement, Sister Carolyn revives her flock in a
series of hilarious, radical, rabble-rousing sermons designed to heal
them of “S.I.N.”—the Synaptically Inadequate Networking that has
been imposed on us all by a pornographized, dumbed-down,
corporate, consumerist culture!

These thirteen sermons remind women to resist the disconnection

that, in the words of Sister Robin Morgan, has become
institutionalized by patriarchy. Sister Carolyn urges her congregation
to remember, to synapse, to make the connections between the
environmental crisis, and personal nutrition, and psychiatric health,
and medical misogyny, and social conditioning, and political
awareness. She inspires women to reach back into their own histories
and the histories of their foremothers for strategies that reinforce
connection and weave webs of alliances and support.

Sister Carolyn’s topics range from economics (“The Great Pyramid

Scheme”), to lesbian limerance (“The Real L-Words”), to the
Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle and Einstein’s Unified Field theory.
She preaches on the impact of global father-son religions on the well-
being and mental health of women, on techniques that engage the
imagination to counter the effects of internalized oppression, and on
the clinical truth about the clitoris as a tip-of-the-iceberg metaphor for
women’s hidden power.

The Lesbian Tent Revival, held at national women’s festivals, has

been a rousing success, and the publication of these sermons should
help spread the spark of radical feminism across a world sunk in
darkness and disconnection.

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 SUPPLEMENTAL SERMONS FOR A LESBIAN TENT REVIVAL

A second volume of sermons from the fourth and fifth years of the
Lesbian Tent Revival, with a section in the back of song lyrics. This
volume includes “The LesbianTent Revival Marriage Ceremony” and
“The Lesbian Butch: Hope of the Planet.

HOTTER THAN HELL

MORE SERMONS FOR A LESBIAN TENT REVIVAL

More sermons for a Lesbian Tent Revival, including the Joanna Russ
Memorial Sermon, Lesbians Are Not Gay Men, Trauma Literacy and
Sexual Intimacy, Butches Who Saved the World and How They Did
It

BIRTH OF A LESBIAN [OUT OF PRINT]

A Science Fiction Autobiography

The author has created a fantastic, nightmarish parable as a tool for

understanding the experiences of her childhood.

THE VERY SHORT PLAYS

A collection of ten of Carolyn Gage's one-act plays, all running under
fifteen minutes in length. Plays include At Sea, Black Eye, Calamity
Jane Sends a Message to Her Daughter, The Clarity of Pizza, The
Gage and Mr. Comstock, The Great Fire, Head in the Game, A Labor
Play, The Ladies’ Room, and Patricide

MORE MONOLOGUES AND SCENES FOR LESBIAN ACTORS

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Gage's second volume of feminist and/or lesbian-themed scenes and
monologues. Many of the roles feature gender non-conforming
characters. This collection includes scenes with the historical actors
Nance O'Neil and Henrietta Vinton Davis (arguably the greatest
African American classical actress of the 19th century). It also
includes material featuring Lizzie Borden's maid, legendary lighting
designer Jean Rosenthal, and Alcoholics Anonymous pioneer Marty
Mann. Eighteen monologues and twenty-six scenes.

SERMONS FOR A HOT KITCHEN

FROM THE LESBIAN TENT REVIVAL
Hilarious, fierce, provocative, and lesbian to the bone marrow! Sister
Carolyn serves up sixteen smokin' sermons from a kitchen that is
hotter than hell. If you can't take the heat, you're gonna be missing
some tasty fare! Sermons include some of Gage's most profound
metaphysics combined with some of the most taboo and sensitive
issues in lesbian community.

Subjects include jealousy and betrayal, Stockholm Syndrome and

Complex PTSD, how to win every argument about abolition of
prostitution, toxic self-sufficiency or too much of a good thing can kill
you, confrontation as a radical act, the difficulty and the necessity of
holding contradiction, and dying well--what is it and how can we learn
to do it?

"The latest sermons from Sister Carolyn: better than ever, and not a
moment too soon... Her sermons give us a lesbian vision through the
haze of a very unlesbian world. Don't be turned off by "sermon" if
you're not a fan of sermonizing. These are essays of concentrated
lesbian wisdom, addressed specifically to lesbians, but they could
save everybody." --Linda Rosewood

THE ISLAND COLLECTION

New plays by Carolyn Gage, including Black Star, Easter Sunday,
Lighting Martha, Female Nude Seated, 52 Pickup, and Miss Le
Gallienne Announces the New Season.

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 BIG PLAYS
Three full-length plays by Gage, including In McClintock’s Corn,
Stigmata, and The Spindle.

AXED!
Two one-act plays that deal with Lizzie Borden and the Fall River ax
murders: Lace Curtain Irish and The Greatest Actress Who Ever
Lived.

THE ABOLITION PLAYS

Two one-act plays that deal with prostitution, including Head in the
Game and The Intimacy Coordinator.

THE DELILAH JOURNAL

Reflections On Being Diagnosed Extremely Late In Life As
Autistic

What readers are saying:

"Reading The Delilah Journal felt like being a young puppy straining
against a leash on a walk through a dog park. I could barely focus on
the words as my brain bounded ahead to the next idea. I couldn’t
force myself to slow down and take notes. I’m sorry. The book is
perfect. We’re sisters. You’ll save lives with it. Don’t change one
word... It’s so difficult in this world to embrace your identity when
people tell you over and over that it’s NOT your identity, that it’s
PTSD, high intelligence, self absorption, so many other things that
you can’t ever seem to “fix” or get a handle on. Then you read a
perfect description of your experience with a word for it and an
acceptance of the ramifications, and you’re set free. You no longer
have to think of yourself as a big poser. And other people’s shame
and judgments don’t matter. It’s so so so important."-- Sandra Kay

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"I'm about halfway through and interrupting myself to send a
preliminary status report: I am gulping this like cool water. Honestly,
I made myself take a break because the reading feels compulsive.
And I'm not breathing right because I'm holding my breath with
excitement about the next thing and the next and the next that will be
words saying so well the things I've sensed and sometimes even said
but haven't put together. I know how to give useful feedback and I will
after a second reading, but just wanted to let you know how strong
my initial response is to this... food I didn't even know I was starving
for." -- L.R.D.

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 ADAPTATIONS

A WOMAN’S BOOK OF HEALING

An adaption of the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health

with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, for use by those who
are seeking a metaphysical system of healing with an emphasis on
right relation and connection with the natural world, where a higher
power is metaphorically referenced as female.

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 CD’S AND DVD’S
THE SECOND COMING OF JOAN OF ARC
[CD]
Audio recording of a live performance of Carolyn Gage in her award-
winning, feminist classic The Second Coming of Joan of Arc. The
recording was made in June Millington’s historic recording studio in
Bodega, California.

UGLY DUCKLINGS: THE DOCUMENTARY

[DVD]
Documentary film by Fawn Yacker, produced by Hardy Girls Healthy
Women of Waterville, Maine. The film contains excerpts from Gage’s
award-winning play Ugly Ducklings, as well as interviews with Gage
and members of the cast. The film is part of a campaign to prevent
LGBT youth suicides and homophobic bullying in the schools.

THE LESBIAN TENT REVIVAL RADIO HOUR PODCASTS

[DVD with MP3 audio files]
21 Audio Sermons by “Sister Carolyn” of the Sisterhood of the Sacred
Synapse, plus two songs from the Lesbian Tent Revival sung by
Jamie Anderson... Blessed Be! More than 10 hours of hilarious,
lesbian feminist, rabble-rousing inspiration!

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