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Copyright 2008 Carolyn Gage Originally posted on the Butch Casting Project Website, 2008

Interview with Carolyn Gage By Karina Karina: What’s the first image of butchness you remember? Carolyn: The first butch I encountered was a friend of my grandmother’s. Her name was “Gussy” and she was a late-stage alcoholic. This was the early 1960’s, in Richmond, Virginia. I had no understanding of lesbianism, but I perceived that Gussy was very different from the rest of the southern belles who surrounded me in my childhood. My brother and I made fun of her, I am sad to say... but not in front of her. Later, when I was nineteen, I encountered my first butch-fem couple when I was working in the fabric department of J.C.Penneys. The year was 1972. Karina: What affect did it have on you? Carolyn: I was electrified. I describe it in an essay called “My First Lesbians.” Here’s an excerpt: “They were a couple, I remember, a butch and a fem. The butch was in her forties, dressed in jeans and a plaid flannel shirt. Her breasts were not apparent. She wore her black hair slicked back in a style left over from the 1950’s, a “duck’s ass” or “DA.” The skin on her face was leathery and tan, with hard lines around the eyes and the mouth. And her hands were in her pockets. Her companion was everything she was not, except, of course, a lesbian. She appeared to be at least ten years younger, a blond—although perhaps not a natural one, and she wore tight blue jeans, but not bellbottoms. These were working-class women, or what we anti-war, student types would call “greasers.” She was shorter than her companion, and she wore makeup and earrings. Her hair was styled, a kind of bouffant look that was the feminine counterpart of the DA.

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The fem was buying fabric, and she was anxious that her purchase be pleasing to her companion. The butch appeared to be very uncomfortable with finding herself on the housewares floor of J.C. Penneys, and she answered her partner in a surly and self-conscious manner. She told her she didn’t know anything about this kind of “stuff.” I remember that I shared the fem’s anxiety about pleasing this woman. I wanted her to know that I also cared, that I welcomed her presence in my department—was honored by it, even. I wanted to protect her from my co-workers who might be startled by her appearance, who might make judgments, who might even try to exchange a look with me. I wanted her to know that I would not side with them against her, that I would never be like one of them. I wanted her to smile at me, and, of course, she never did. I think of this butch woman now, and I wonder what she made of the lesbians who must have just been emerging in Boulder in1972—my generation of lesbians—young women in hiking boots with hairy legs and hairy armpits, neither butch nor fem, taking and teaching self-defense and auto repair classes, starting carpentry collectives, and organizing women’s clinics and women’s presses and women’s bookstores, and women’s festivals. Lesbians fighting and loving and trashing and marching and mimeographing, smashing the state, taking back the night, giving peace a chance, making love not war. Feminists and Marxists and anarchists and vegetarians. Lesbians with speculums looking at each other’s cervices, lesbians with vibrators learning how to have orgasms, lesbians with kiwis, with zucchinis, with bananas, with cucumbers. Lesbians in threesomes and foursomes, in marriages, in families, in collectives, in cooperatives, in tents, in tepees, in yurts, in cabins, in dormitories. Lesbians quoting Ti-Grace Atkinson, Audre Lorde, Judy Grahn, Shulamith Firestone, Simone de Beauvoir, Gloria Steinem, Kate Millett, Jill Johnston, Valerie Solanas. What must this butch have thought of this veritable explosion of latter-day tribadists? What could she have thought? Where in her centuries of oppression could she find any reason to trust women, even lesbians, who were not like herself? With the unerring instinct of the

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hunted, she would have concluded, and rightly, that the lesbians of the early seventies were dangerous to her. Had she smiled at me on that second floor of J.C. Penney’s, or shared a look that admitted to her vulnerability or—worse yet—solicited support, I would have betrayed her, and in a heartbeat. And it was this perpetual knowledge of an ever-present potential for betrayal that had etched the hard, hard lines around her eyes and her mouth. It was this knowledge that the fem was hoping to soften, to erase for just a moment, in the manufacture of some article of clothing for herself, for her lover, for their home, that would signify a kind of normalcy, a kind of belongingness that could never be a reality for a woman who had to run daily a gauntlet of scorn, violence, and contempt that would have killed an ordinary woman. And so her eyes never met mine, because they never missed a thing.” Karina: When did you start writing plays? When did you start writing butch characters? Carolyn: I wrote my first play around 1984. I wrote my first butch character, a stage manager, in 1985. Karina: Has the definition of butch changed since you started writing? What did it mean then and what does it mean now? Carolyn: I’m not sure that I ever knew the definition of a butch. I remember one of the first butch women I had a crush on... I asked her what “butch” was. She looked at me with infinite pain in her eyes (she had been born in the 1940’s... and was an actor...) and said, “Nobody knows, but they sure know it when they see one.” I never forgot that. In my experience, that’s still the best answer I can give to that question. Karina: What’s the worst a director/casting director has done to one of your butch character? What’s the best? Carolyn: I wrote a play about a butch Joan of Arc. I mean, come on… Here was a woman soldier in the 15th century, insisting on short hair and men’s clothing. Her refusal to wear a dress was one of the major points in her trial. When she finally did put on a dress, she was

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raped… after which, she reverted to her male clothing… which was the excuse for executing her. Twice her body was inspected in order to satisfy public curiosity about her biological sex. This was a butch. Everything in the record supports that reading. Anyway… I wrote a play that was specifically about her experience as a lesbian and as a butch… and as a militant advocate for women’s freedom. In Brazil, there was a first-class (Broadway-level) production of the play, starring a woman who was a big film/daytime TV star. This was a one-woman show. The way they got around that was they cast four men on motorcycles, who had no dialogue—and then they called them “scenic elements!” And Joan? She was in a leather bustier, with ripped fishnet stockings, Theda Bara-like eye makeup, with a sullen, come-f***-me look. They put her in a cage reminiscent of strip club cages for dancers. I could go on and on. In my play, Joan describes her rape in angry, defiant words intended to empower an audience of lesbians and survivors. In Brazil, they cut the speech and performed the rape with full frontal male nudity, so I am told. I have toured in this play myself for more than twenty years, sometimes doing it for $50, or benefits for women in prison. Silly me… a couple of “scenic elements” and some costume and makeup adjustments, and I could have made millions. In Brazil it was the top-selling commercial show in Rio and Sao Paolo, and went on to tour cities all over the country. No, I never went to see it. Did it affect me? I took a gigantic step back into lesbian separatism. I had always wondered what would happen if one of my plays went to Broadway. Now, one of them finally had. No need to wonder anymore. Most of my plays feature butch women, and rarely are they played by butch women. When I have cast butch women in these roles, it is often their first experience on the stage and the experience is overwhelming and negative for the actor. Why? Because theatre is deep conjuring, and it entails handling very volatile material… sacred fire, if you will. It requires apprenticeship and years of training. I have, foolishly, put women into lead roles with explosive material, who lacked this training. I have done this because of my intense desire to see butch women in the butch roles. I have been so hurt by the lack of lesbians, especially butches, willing to play butch roles, I wrote an entire 300-page production manual, Take Stage! How to Direct and

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Produce a Lesbian Play, which was intended to help lesbians learn how to produce community lesbian theatre…and grow our own actors. It was clear that butch actors were never going to get a break in either academic training programs or mainstream community theatre. I have never, in hundreds of productions, in twenty years, EVER, EVER seen a straight woman commit to a butch role. Last winter, in Palm Springs, there was a production of a play of mine. As usual, one of the lead roles was a butch. None of the women came forward to play it, and so they cast a man. I have dozens of similar horror stories. Don’t get me started!! The best? Most recently, singer-songwriter Ellis performed the role of Babe Didrikson in my musical Babe about this great Olympic athlete. Ellis, as Babe, was everything I could have ever dreamed of, and more. Why? Well, because she is a consummate performer with years and years of touring experience, and because she was telling a story that, according to her, touched on many of her own emotions and experiences. Karina: What was the last great butch character you saw that you didn’t write? Carolyn: Oh… hard to answer, because I tend to write them all: Natalie Barney, Charlotte Cushman, Joan of Arc, Babe Didrikson, Amy Lowell, Rachel Carson, Jane Addams, Cornelia Crosby, Violette LeDuc, Edna St.Vincent Millay, May Sarton, Sarah Orne Jewett, Sappho, Calamity Jane, Eva le Gallienne, Artemisia Gentileschi, Harriet Tubman, Benedetta Carlini, Esther Roper… I would have to give that some thought… There are some that I passed on, because of their alcoholism or classism… like Radclyffe Hall. Karina: Will butch ever become mainstream? If it did, what would that mean? Carolyn: Not unless we stop living in patriarchy. The butch is an

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archetype that deconstructs traditional gender roles. Shakespeare played with the butch archetype, partly because he worked with an all-male theatre company, but also because he was profoundly invested, as a gay playwright with enormous sensitivity to women, in interrogating those gender roles. This is inconceivable for contemporary macho playwrights like Mamet, Albee, Miller, etc. The butch, even if she just walks across the stage to pour tea, is a visual, public affirmation that “the Emperor has no clothes…” which is to say that the ideological superiority of men that supports their global, historical dominance is nothing but smoke and mirrors. The presence of the butch raises the question, “Are men just trying to be butches?” The success of the Takarazuka Revue with mainstream, presumably heterosexual, female audiences is a case in point. I think it is very important to pay attention to anything that is censored by patriarchy. If there is one lesson I have learned from my twenty years of writing butch-centered, lesbian-centered, radical feminist plays, it is that the power of the butch archetype scares the shit out of almost everyone… including me. I can’t tell you how happy I am to know about the Butch Casting Project, and I invite any and all to check out my catalog and email me for free PDF’s of my work. My book, Monologues and Scenes for Lesbian Actors, actually indexes the roles that are butch. I sell the book from my website and I will offer free shipping to BCP folks. Here is a list of some of my plays featuring great butch roles. You can go to my website at www.carolyngage.com to look up the complete synopses, review excerpts, production histories, etc. of these plays. The Second Coming of Joan of Arc

Award-winning one-woman show. A butch 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.

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The Last Reading of Charlotte Cushman

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.”

Amy Lowell: in Her Own Words A platform reading by the famous butch 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. For a butch of size.

Extravagant Love: the Life of Violette LeDuc

An avant-garde odyssey into the vivid and often terrifying world of lesbian butch Parisian author Violette LeDuc. Play encompasses themes of abortion, lesbian prostitution, self-hatred, and maternal incest. Not for the faint-hearted!

MUSICALS The Amazon All-stars

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!

Babe: An Olympian Musical

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. For a major butch athelete.

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How To Write a Country-Western Song

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. Two of the leads are butch: Rock star and blues singer.

FULL-LENGTH PLAYS 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! (Many butch roles, including Sappho.)

The Spindle

A children’s theatre play for adults! As the thirteen-year old butch kitchen helper 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 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! Two of the leads are for butches.

Thanatron

This is a rollicking farce about the world’s most dysfunctional family, a doctor with a penchant for assisted suicide, and a butch housekeeper with a crush on her employer. An over-the-top comedy about leaving, being left, and what it takes to stay.

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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. Esther is the butch.

Stigmata A tragedy in five-acts about the 16th century, Italian butch nun, Benedetta Carlini, whose sexual relationship with another nun became the subject of a trial by the Inquisition.

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. Lead role is a butch.

ONE-ACTS Louisa May Incest

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. Jo is, of course, a butch.

Calamity Jane Sends a Message to Her Daughter

Fifteen-minute comic monologue by a butch woman in late stages of alcholism. Hilarious and heart-breaking. She narrates a butch experience of giving birth to a daughter.

Cookin’ with Typhoid Mary

Half-hour dramatic monologue by the notorious typhoid carrier who refused to admit the existence of germs. Her side of the story. Butch.

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Artemisia and Hildegard

Two of the most powerful women artists in history discuss their work on an explosive arts panel about survival strategies for women artists. Butch vs. fem artists.

Harriet Tubman Visits a Therapist 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. Tubman as butch.

Entr’acte, or The Night Eva Le Gallienne Was Raped .

Eva Le Gallienne, a young butch, 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.

Parmachene Belle

“Fly Rod” Crosby, a butch 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. Performed Off-Broadway at Bleecker Street Theatre.

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. Several butch roles.

Patricide: A Play in One Minute

A one-minute monologue by a woman of any age, ethnicity, race, orientation, physical ability, gender presentation, class background --- in which she calls and confronts her father on incest.

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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. PE teacher is butch.

Bite My Thumb 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!. Old-school lesbian butch rumbles with FTM over issues of identity.

The Obligatory Scene Ostensibly arguing about The Taming of the Shrew, a lesbian couple

come to grips with their own marital struggles around the issue of sex. Stone butch with high fem.

The A-Mazing Yamashita and the Golddiggers of 2008 “The transnational, post-modern 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 commodification, and the wonders of the Great Cabinet of GATT. The heroine is a young African American butch.

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. Heroine is a butch.

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

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her lover Natalie Barney. She wrestles with scenarios of traumatic memories in an attempt to find closure. Barney is, of course, the butch.

Blackeye 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 butch P.E. teacher shows that she is just as willing to fight as her student. A taut play, filled with surprises.