Carolyn Gage – författare

A one-act about the lesbian relationship between legendary lighting designer Jean Rosenthal and her assistant Miki (Marion) Kinsella. The play explores the pain of losing a life partner, and the challenges of loving a committed artist.

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.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. The play is shaped by the audience decisions to overrule or sustain the attorneys' motions and every night's audience sees a different play.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."Elegantly conceived...A feminist Noises Off." - Washington City Press"Powerful." -San Diego Lesbian Press"Farce social history debate play agitprop audience participation melodrama satire [that] makes the head reel!" -San Diego Union Tribune"Wild... It's lively and moves quickly... Very funny yet poignant." -Washington Blade"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."... fascinating and complex play..."--Fresno Beehive.com"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 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."Each performance could potentially have a different result and many students saw every performance just so they could see how the show ended."--At Oldfields Glencoe MD.

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.

Joan of Arc led an army to victory at seventeen. At eighteen she engineered the coronation of a king. At nineteen she went up against the 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 s

Take Stage! is the first comprehensive "how-to" book for lesbians wanting to produce or direct lesbian theatre. Controversial and anecdotal, Take Stage! is written for the lesbian with no previous experience with theatre or lesbian organization. In addition to chapters on auditioning, rehearsals, selecting the script, booking space, and assembling a staff, the book includes chapters on issues of special interest to lesbians.Take Stage! includes information on how to challenge the "isms"—lookism, racism, classism, ageism, and other prejudices with which lesbian culture is currently engaged. It also looks at problems of accountability in non-hierarchal structures, boundary-setting among all-volunteer staffs, sabotage via hidden agendas or disassociative behaviors, horizontal hostility, and internalized homophobia. The appendix contains sample contracts, audition forms, light plots, budgets, and schedules.From the decision to produce the play to opening night and touring, Take Stage! covers all the bases and provides a healthy dose of moral support.

Carolyn Gage's tenth collection of plays, including Starpattern, The Family Reunion, Restell, Reef Point, Grace at the Claremont, and St. Frances and the Fallen Angels.

Two one-act plays about facing and surviving abnormal times. One of them is a fable for the era of climate cris, about a confrontation between humans and the other members of the Great Apes family. The other play is about survivors of the 1968 shooting at the University of Texas at Austin. Although historical, the drama takes place in a liminal space between life and death.

At the Thirteen-Millionth Annual Great Apes Family Reunion, the gorilla matriarch has organized a separate picnic for the great ape females, in order to call out the enabling of human males in the destruction of the planet. This one-act is a playful, but profound reminder that human evolution has been maladaptive in the extreme, and that our forms of social organization have been disastrously enabling of innate male primate violence.

A play about two extraordinarily courageous young women who survived the 1966 mass shooting on the University of Texas at Austin. Claire Wilson, one of the first victims, lay wounded on the South Mall, unable to be rescued while the sniper was still active. Rita Starpattern ran out, at tremendous risk, lay down next to her, and engaged her in a conversation that kept her conscious and alive for over an hour.

A Dickensian play about 19th century abortionist Madame Restell and her daring escape from the clutches of Anthony Comstock.

The lady''s maid of celebrated landscape designer Beatrix Farrand wrestles with Farrand''s decision in 1955 to tear down her estate on Bar Harbor, and with it the gardens that have been her lifework. A play about making enormous changes very late in life. A poignant two-hander for two older women.

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," and the author shares her thoughts on sex and relationships, communication, bullying, furniture, and a wide range of subjects from a neurodivergent perspective.