Conversation with a prolific playwright who colors outside the lines

There's nothing "average" about Carolyn Gage, a Bar Harbor playwright who wrote The Anastasia Trials in the Court of Women, which opens at the New Surry Theatre in Blue Hill on Friday, March 14. She's an autistic, feminist lesbian, a national-award-winning author of 88 plays (so far), as well as essays and short stories. Calling her "prolific" understates the breadth of her reach, talent and creativity.

- BY SUZANNE CARMICHAEL

When I interviewed Carolyn last week, my first question was "do you remember the very first thing you wrote?" "I believe it was a short story," Carolyn told me, "a fairy tale called The Two Pocketbooks. It was about two doll pocketbooks. My mother showed it to a journalist friend who praised it to high heaven."

"I also remember," Carolyn continued, "that by third grade I was reading Tales from Shakespeare by Charles and Mary Lamb. This was not the plays themselves, but the stories of the plays. I also had a massive collection of Classics Illustrated, which were comic book versions of classics like Moby Dick and The Last of the Mohicans. I read them so much I can still remember many of the panels. Comic books and plays have a lot in common conceptually."