Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Current Gage Catalog Piese de Teatru
Current Gage Catalog Piese de Teatru
One-Acts, and
One-Woman Shows
By
Carolyn Gage
www.carolyngage.com
http://stores.lulu.com/carolyngage
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The night I saw Second Coming [of Joan of Arc], six years ago, I
borrowed a copy of the play from a friend. Ever since then the book
has lived in my book bag, purse, shoulder bag, carry on, reminding
me that there are two ways to destroy a woman, reminding me not
to get ripped apart. Gage has has given us a hero that doesnt run
around in her underwear and taught us to take back the voices in
our heads. Gage has changed so many lives she will never know
about. and the only way I know how to thank her is to never stop
fighting. Tamanya Garza, The University of the Sciences,
Philadelphia.
Carolyn Gage is to lesbian playwriting as Georgia OKeefe 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.
Womens 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
Carolyns 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 Carolyns 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 studentsespecially 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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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 RSURRECTION DE JEANNE DARC ...................................... 4
A lively and contemporary French translation of The Second
Coming of Joan of Arc, by bilingual actress Stephanie Sullivan.
H ................................ 4
Bulgarian translation by Victoria Koleva of The Second Coming
of Joan of Arc.
THE LAST READING OF CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN ....................... 4
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
Wolseyas well as scenes and other monologues from her
repertoire. National award for best play about a lesbian
historical figure.
DRAMATIC ADAPTATIONS
AMY LOWELL: IN HER OWN WORDS............................................ 7
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 ................................................................................... 8
A dramatic adaptation of the lesbian writings of beloved 19thcentury New England writer Sarah Orne Jewett. Including
excerpts form her novels, diaries, letters, and poems. For two
(or four) women.
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ONE-WOMAN PLAYS
THE SECOND COMING OF JOAN OF ARC
A One-Woman Play
ONE-WOMAN PLAYS
H
Bulgarian translation by Victoria Koleva of The Second
Coming of Joan of Arc.
ONE-WOMAN PLAYS
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 Lowells 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 Lowells
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 familyor 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)
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DEEP HAVEN
A Dramatic Adaptation
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DRAMATIC ADAPTATIONS
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.
Bretts 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
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DRAMATIC ADAPTATIONS
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MUSICALS
THE AMAZON ALL-STARS
A Lesbian Musical
Music by Sue Carney
Sample of songs at
www.myspace.com/theamazonallstars
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MUSICALS
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 womyns 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.
Twelve women
Two hours
Three sets
LEADING LADIES
A Cabaret Musical Revue
Music by Teresa Wilhelmi
Sample of songs at
www.myspace.com/leadingladiesthemusical
Staged reading, Music in a Box, the Dramatists Guild, NYC.
First Place, Musical Theatre, Seattle New Plays Buffet, juried by
Civic Light Opera.
National Finalist, Aggie Players Playwriting Competition, Texas
A & M University.
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MUSICALS
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MUSICALS
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 70s, with the attendant witch hunts and political correctness
wars.
Stevie, who produces lesbian erotic videos in Los Angeles, finds
that her protg 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, Stevies 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
70s. Damian, determined to find the women who dont 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
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MUSICALS
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
her country-western song. The concert ends with a celebration of
diversity, recovery and womens music.
2 African American women, 3 women of any race
Single set (a concert stage)
90 minutes.
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FULL-LENGTH PLAYS
SAPPHO IN LOVE
A Lesbian Midsummer Nights Dream
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FULL-LENGTH PLAYS
mean I expect this show to sell out fast if last nights 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.
My partner and I were looking for a romantic date night
activity and happened upon this phenomenal play! Touching,
funny, gregariouswell worth the money! For anyone who
enjoys the theater, Sappho in Love is one of the most sidesplitting 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, wellproduced, and you shouldnt miss it The play is charming,
energizing, and Im so happy to have seen it!
You dont 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 Aphrodites use of her
intoxicating nectar to attract followers, vows to found a rival school
on Lesbos where young girls will be weaned away from Sapphos
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FULL-LENGTH PLAYS
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THE SPINDLE
A Drama in Two Acts
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FULL-LENGTH PLAYS
UGLY DUCKLINGS
A Lesbian Drama
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FULL-LENGTH PLAYS
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FULL-LENGTH PLAYS
THANATRON
A Comedy in Two Acts
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FULL-LENGTH PLAYS
officers. Esther engineers her escape from the palace, and the two
women go underground, hiding in the homes of Jewish women.
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 Esthers 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 selfdefense 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
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extraordinary life of the 16 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
Benedettas precocious sexuality, her mother incarcerates her in a
convent when Benedetta begins to menstruate.
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The Abbess, whose enlightened policies have kept the convent from
becoming enclosed, makes Benedetta her assistant, and the two
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, sadomasochistic 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
Benedettas 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
Benedettas 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
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FULL-LENGTH PLAYS
Three hours
Multiple sets
COMING ABOUT
A Three-Act Play About Changing Roles in Marriage
FULL-LENGTH PLAYS
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ONE-ACT PLAYS
MASON-DIXON
A One-Act for Two Women
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ONE-ACT PLAYS
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ONE-ACT PLAYS
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 Louisas true motives in violating her own
creation. When Jo introduces evidence of Bronson Alcotts child
molesting and Louisas 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
These women, most of them now in their sixties, look back in horror
on their various onstage rapes, batterings, and partnerings with
inferior men.
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 doesnt 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 womans point of view, but which also
tackles the most divisive social issue of the 90s: violence toward
women. A play with many layers!
Ten women
35 minutes
Single set
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ONE-ACT PLAYS
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blood-curdling, side-splitting out of the mouths of fullblown 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.
Marys 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
ONE-ACT PLAYS
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 fathers 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 others 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.
Two women
One hour
Single set (podium)
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ONE-ACT PLAYS
ENTRACTE
OR THE NIGHT EVE LE GALLIENNE WAS RAPED
A One-Act Play
ONE-ACT PLAYS
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ONE-ACT PLAYS
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! Kue,
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ONE-ACT PLAYS
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
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ONE-ACT PLAYS
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 Jacksons
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.
Womens 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 complicitya complicity that renders us victims
and betrayers.
Six women
Single set
Twenty-five minutes
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) Kelseys 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 agencys 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.
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A LABOR PLAY
A One-Act Propaganda Piece
ONE-ACT PLAYS
HETEROSEXUALS ANONYMOUS
A Twelve-Step Spoof
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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
others boyfriends. An explosive play, examining the roots of
violence between women.
In Radicals, two women live together; one is an activist in the antiwar movement, and the other is apolitical - but paying all the bills.
The womens inability to communicate their feelings for each other
leads them towards increasingly destructive and competitive roles.
Finally, 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
ONE-ACT PLAYS
PATRICIDE
A Play in One Minute
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ONE-ACT PLAYS
BITE MY THUMB
A Skirmish in One Act
ONE-ACT PLAYS
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ONE-ACT PLAYS
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. Drus experiences are universal and pandemic
among women, and Drus insistence on incorporating that
understanding into her practice of intimacy shatters Viveys
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
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ONE-ACT PLAYS
Sample of songs at
www.myspace.com/tilthefatladysings
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
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ONE-ACT PLAYS
ONE-ACT PLAYS
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BLACK EYE
A Knockout in Nine Minutes
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ONE-ACT PLAYS
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 girls 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.
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 Expos
The play opens in a caf in Paris, in 1977. Michel-Henri, a middleaged academic, sits at a small table with a bottle of wine. JacquesPierre, 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
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Thirty-five years after the infamous Fall River ax murders, a 61year-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
Bordens former maid.
As she reads the article, Bridget shares with the audience her rage
toward her former employers 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
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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. Bridgets childhood with fourteen siblings was a harsh one,
and, wanting to escape her mothers fate, she has emigrated with a
dream of having an independent life.
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
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THE SECOND COMING OF JOAN OF ARC AND SELECTED
PLAYS [2009]
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And, as always, the conflict between Gages 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 genderbending as practicedor notby a mainstream rep company and a
womens theatre. Battered on Broadway examines the masochism
and martyrdom embedded in female roles in the traditional
Broadway musical. In Entracte, 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 Gallienne, is in a sanatorium, facing the crisis of her
careera 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 characters
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 breakthrough, a shift into another paradigm, where radical
possibility abounds. This is why I write.
The anthology includes The Obligatory Scene, Bite My Thumb,
Entracte 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 Nights Dream, with the
goddesses of celibacy, love, and marriage competing for Sapphos
attention amid poetry contests, meteor showers, lessons on lesbian
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TAKE STAGE!
How to Direct and Produce a Lesbian Play
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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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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 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
20s 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 19thcentury New England writer Sarah Orne Jewett. Including
excerpts form her novels, diaries, letters, and poems.
SINCE I DIED
th
A dramatic adaptation of a 19 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.
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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 giftV.E.
A thirty-six page electricians manual for reprogramming key
concepts about intimate relationships.
Phyllis
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The sermons from the 2011 Lesbian Tent Revival, including the
Joanna Russ Memorial Sermon, Lesbians Are Not Gay Men,
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ADAPTATIONS
A WOMANS 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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