Jane Chambers (March 27, 1937 – February 15, 1983) was an American playwright. She was a "pioneer in writing theatrical works with openly

lesbian A lesbian is a homosexual woman or girl. The word is also used for women in relation to their sexual identity or sexual behavior, regardless of sexual orientation, or as an adjective to characterize or associate nouns with female homosexu ...

characters". Chambers was born in

Columbia, South Carolina Columbia is the List of capitals in the United States, capital city of the U.S. state of South Carolina. With a population of 136,632 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is List of municipalities in South Carolina, the second-mo ...

, but grew up in

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, where she started writing with scripts for local public radio stations. She studied at

Rollins College Rollins College is a Liberal arts college, private liberal arts college in Winter Park, Florida. It was founded in November 1885 and has about 30 undergraduate majors and several master's programs. Florida's fourth oldest post-secondary institut ...

, intending to become a playwright, but dropped out of Rollins after she encountered discrimination as a woman there. After studying acting for a season at the

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in 1956, she moved to

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and then on to Poland Spring, Maine, where she worked for WMTW. Returning to New York in 1968, she enrolled at Goddard College, Vermont to try again for an undergraduate degree. There she met Beth Allen, who would remain her lover, companion and manager. Completing her degree in 1971, Chambers began to achieve recognition as a writer: she won the

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Award for Poetry, and her play ''Christ in a Treehouse'', won a Connecticut Educational Television Award. In 1972, she received a Eugene O'Neill Fellowship for ''Tales of the Revolution and Other American Fables'', staged at the Eugene O'Neill Memorial Theater. She helped establish theater at the Women's Interart Center in New York, putting on her play ''Random Violence'' there in 1972. Her writing for the soap opera ''

Search for Tomorrow ''Search for Tomorrow'' is an American television soap opera. It began its run on CBS on September 3, 1951, and concluded on NBC, 35 years later, on December 26, 1986. Set in the fictional town of Henderson in an unspecified state, the show f ...

'' won her a

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Award in 1973. ''A Late Snow'', produced at

Playwrights Horizons Playwrights Horizons is a not-for-profit American Off-Broadway theater located in New York City dedicated to the support and development of contemporary American playwrights, composers, and lyricists, and to the production of their new work. ...

in 1974 was one of the earliest plays to portray lesbian characters in a positive light. In 1980, Chambers started to work with The Glines, writing '' Last Summer at Bluefish Cove'' for their First Gay American Arts Festival, about the impact upon a woman and her lesbian friends after she is diagnosed with cancer. Chambers was herself diagnosed with cancer in 1981. She continued to write, producing ''My Blue Heaven'' for the Second Gay American Arts Festival at the Glines, and ''The Quintessential Image'' for the Women's Theatre Conference in

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. She died at her home in Greenport,

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on February 15, 1983. Starting in 1984, there has been an annual award in her name, the Jane Chambers Playwriting Award. In 2022, Chambers was featured in the book ''50 Key Figures in Queer US Theatre'', with a profile written by theatre scholar Sara Warner.

Works

* ''Burning: a novel'', 1978 * ''A late snow: a play in two acts'', 1979 * '' Last summer at Bluefish Cove: a play in two acts'', 1980 * ''My blue heaven: a comedy in two acts'', 1981 * ''Warrior at rest: a collection of poetry'', 1984 * ''Chasin' Jason: a novel'', 1987

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Chambers, Jane 1937 births 1983 deaths American women dramatists and playwrights American LGBTQ dramatists and playwrights LGBTQ people from South Carolina 20th-century American dramatists and playwrights 20th-century American women writers Writers from Columbia, South Carolina LGBTQ people from Florida Writers from Orlando, Florida American lesbian writers Goddard College alumni 20th-century American LGBTQ people