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.

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."

Six new plays by Carolyn Gage, including Black Star, Easter Sunday, Lighting Martha, Female Nude Seated, Miss Le Gallienne Announces the New Season, and 52 Pickup.

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.

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 collection of twelve 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, 52 Pickup, Patricide, and Miss Le Gallienne Announces the New Season

Sixteen smokin' hot sermons served up steaming by Sister Carolyn of the Sisterhood of the Sacred Synapse! Hilarious, fierce, provocative, and lesbianic to the bone. If you can't take the heat, you'll be missing out on some nourishing fare!

Three full-length dramas by Carolyn Gage: 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.

A one-act play by Carolyn Gage. A tribal police officer struggles with her lesbian partner over issues of loyalty and definitions of "family." 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.

A collection of ten of Gage's hardest-hitting one-act plays, including: Black Eye, The Ladies' Room, The A-Mazing Yamashita and the Millennial Gold-diggers, A Labor Play, Heterosexuals Anonymous, The Boundary Trial of John Proctor, The Evil That Men Do: The Story of Thalidomide, The Gage and Mr. Comstock, The P.E. Teacher, and The Rules of the Playground.

This is a one-woman show 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. In this tale of lost lesbian love,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.

..". a classic in every feminist's library."-Sacramento Arts and Entertainment Examiner. A collection of four short stories and one full-length play about lesbian goddesses, princesses and woman princes, super-heroines, and fairy godmothers! Becca and the Woman Prince: A European princess meets an African woman prince in this romantic, multicultural, feminist fairy tale! The Princess of Pain: A woman struggling with disabilty sets out on a ten-goddess quest for answers. Illustrated by Sudie Rakusin! The Furies: Three lesbian super-heroines debate the wisdom of accepting a young survivor into their league. Andrea and Medusa Get Intimate: Two lesbian super-heroines discover that some of the most dangerous missions are the ones closest to home. The Spindle: In this "children's theatre for adults," a young lesbian sets out to rescue the princess from the curse of the spindle-pricking on her sixteenth birthday, only to discover that the entire kingdom is under the spindle spell

Gage's award-winning collection of plays, including The Second Coming of Joan of Arc, The Last Reading of Charlotte Cushman, The Parmachene Belle, Cookin' with Typhoid Mary, Harriet Tubman Visits A Therapist, Calamity Jane Sends a Message to Her Daughter, and Artemisia and Hildegard. National winner of the Lambda Literary Award in Drama.

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!

A collection of eight one-act plays by lesbian playwright Carolyn Gage. Includes Lace Curtain Irish, The Greatest Actress Who Ever Lived, Planchette, Little Sister, Souvenirs from Eden, The Countess and the Lesbians, Deep Haven, Since I Died, and 'Til the Fat Lady Sings.

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, award-winning lesbian drama!