ABSTRACT
Jane Chambers (1937–1983) broke boundaries with her lesbian dramas, making history as one of the first openly gay North American playwrights to pen out characters comfortable in their own skin and with their same-sex desires. When an actress and her understudy became ill during the Off-Broadway run of Last Summer at Bluefish Cove (1980), Chambers took the stage, for the first time in decades. This experience led to new insights about her play and transformed her (antiquated, hierarchical) ideas about the relationship between dramatists and performers, revelations she explored in an essay titled “The Arrogant Playwright as Humble Actor.”
