Copyright 2012 Carolyn Gage INTRODUCTION They say that they are starting from zero.

. They say that a new world is beginning.Monique Wittig.

In her novel, Les Gurillres, French lesbian-feminist author Monique Wittig envisioned a world where women were rising up in armed rebellion against patriarchal institutions. In attempting to describe this new world they wanted to create, Wittigs women warriors found themselves perpetually frustrated by the limitations of the language they had learned from their colonizers: The women say, the language you speak poisons your glottis tongue palate lips. They say, the language you speak is made up of words that are killing you. They say, the language you speak is made up of signs that rightly speaking designate what men have appropriated. Whatever they have not laid hands on, whatever they have not pounced on like many-eyed birds of prey, does not appear in the language you speak. This is specifically the difficulty with lesbian theatre. The symbolic gestures, tropes, metaphors, bits, stock characters and formulaic situations that facilitate the compressed telling of a story in real time on a stageall of these derive from a canon that has traditionally employed female characters chiefly as rewards or obstacles for men, in narratives that presume an audience identified with the principle male characters and their issues.

Whatever they have not laid hands onthat is, the paradigms and archetypes belonging to female-identified narratives, and especially to lesbian narrativesdo not appear. Lesbian-feminist philosopher Mary Daly described this malestream culture as the foreground, while designating as the Background the world of womens authentic being: Background: the Realm of Wild Reality; the Homeland of womens Selves and of all other Others foreground: male-centered and mono-dimensional arena where fabrication, objectification, and alienation take place Marilyn Frye, another lesbian-feminist philosopher, made an interesting analogy between women and stagehands, noting that what she calls Phallocratic Reality occupies the foreground of the worldview, where men and their experiences are illuminated, while women constitute the shadowy backstage crew whose invisibility is as essential to the maintenance of male performance as are our resources. How then to tell the stories of the stagehands? To place ourselves center stagedivorcing us from the patriarchal context that gives us meaning and renders us coherent in contemporary culture? How can one represent with integrity stories of lives lived behind the scenes by placing us in the glare of the spotlight? On the other hand, to move the audience backstage is to risk revealing the secret of male performance described by Virginia Woolf in Room of Ones Own that women have served all these centuries as looking glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting man as twice his natural size.

The staging of stories by, for, about, and serving the interests of women, and especially of lesbians, is more than a question of switching up pronouns, affirmative action hiring, or special initiatives to promote the work of women artists. It is about, literally, starting from zero. Because, what Daly and Wittig are talking about is a colonization of languagea colonization of the imagination. Wittig goes on to describe the lack of language for whatever they have not laid hands on: This is apparent precisely in the intervals that your masters have not been able to fill with their words of proprietors and possessors, this can be found in the gaps, in all that which is not a continuation of their discourse, in the zero, the O, the perfect circle that you invent to imprison them and to overthrow them. And this is where we must begin. The perfect circle, the zero. Lesbian relationships, like lesbian theatre, are expected to recycle the accepted tropes of heteropatriarchal cultureits gender roles, its power dynamics, its sexual clichs: Boston marriage, lesbian bed death, which one is the man? When lesbians resist such appropriation, our relationships, like our theatre, must be relegated to the intervals, to the gaps of patriarchal language and of paradigms. But the patriarchal stigma attached to this absence cannot compare with the promise of the zero, the perfect circle we will invent to imprison the narratives that exclude us and to overthrow their archetypes. Our zero encircles and encompasses what male playwrights and critics have declared for millennia to be universal themes. Imprisoned in the context of their narratives, they cannot

even acknowledge our existence. Their denial of us only reinforces the power of our zero. The women say, I refuse henceforward to speak this language, I refuse to mumble after them the words lack of penis lack of money lack of insignia lack of name. I refuse to pronounce the names of possession and non-possession. They say, If I take over the world, let it be to dispossess myself of it immediately, let it be to forge new links between myself and the world. Lack of penis how will we be sexual with each other? Lack of money how will we be able to exert the coercive dominance that ensures fidelity? Lack of insignia who is going to wear the pants? Lack of name with no words for who we are and how we interact, how can we be legitimate? Refusing to pronounce possession and non-possession, can it be said that we have any rights, and if not, what will take their place? African American, womanist author Toni Cade Bambara said, I try to take seriously acts of language. Words set things in motion. Ive seen them doing it. Words set up atmospheres, electrical fields, charges. Ive felt them doing it Im careful about what I give voice to. The language and conventions of patriarchal theatre steer women relentlessly in the direction of assimilation/capitulation, or else toward tragedy. In my work, I do not find resolution for lesbians in those endings, and the question is not only to define the alternative ending, but to generate the contexts for arriving. The noun playwright is interesting to me. There is an element of craftsmanship, of buildingas with a boatwright or a cartwright. Like our fellow wrights, we, too, build structures designed to transport. The play must contain the audience and then carry them collectively,

for two hours. And the lesbian playwright must start at zero in order to generate alternative destinations. Bamabara always knew where she was going: The issue is salvation. I work to produce stories that save our lives. I aspire to do the same. In The Greatest Actress Who Ever Lived, I want to re-examine the trope of the casual affair in light of the tremendous revolutionary potential of any lesbian attraction in a world founded on male bonding and female alienation. The closeted woman experiencing her first lesbian kiss wrestles with the more seasoned lesbian performer for control of the narrative, demanding a more radical interpretation. Souvenirs from Eden explores the impact of trauma on lesbian couples, revisiting the breakup of a celebrated pair of historical lovers. Again, I was searching for a resolution beyond the romantic clichs, because these clichs actually restimulate the trauma for a survivor. Lace Curtain Irish revises the history of Lizzie Borden, but it also explores the unnamed intimacy between a heterosexual woman and a lesbian, between a live-in servant and an employers daughter. The Countess and the Lesbians is another play reclaiming lesbian history, but also exploring a radical model for a lesbian breakup. In this play issues of interpersonal colonization are counterposed against a backdrop of the Easter Rising. Til the Fat Lady Sings follows a lesbian couple into a hospital, where one partner is scheduled to undergo surgery for a gastric bypass. In this play, the struggle lies with how to support a partner when one perceives her choices as self-hating.

Sarah Orne Jewetts partnership with Annie Fields was a model of starting from zero. The two women arranged their lives to fit their passions for each other and also for their very separate careers. So much of this aspect of Jewetts life has been censored, it was important to me to write Deep Haven, adapting their writings with a focus on the lesbian dynamics and values. Finally, Since I Died models a lesbian reversal of the traditional view of death. In this adaptation of a short story, the narrator is the dead woman, and just as viewing the heterosexual world through the lesbian lens turns everything on its head, so does this intriguing view of life as seen from the other side.