Jane Chambers

Jane Chambers was considered one of the most significant lesbian playwrights because of her depiction of the love between women as non-pathological. She was a novelist and poet who wrote for television as well. Chambers worked for a literary agent, acted, directed, was a staff writer for a television station in Poland Spring, Maine, and was the director of avocation for the Job Corps in Jersey City. It was there she met Beth Allen, who became her life partner and manager. In 1972, she founded the Women's Interart Theater in New York City with Margot Lewitin. Her playwriting career continued with a series of one acts performed at Interart Theater, Last Summer at Bluefish Cove at Shandol Theater in New York City, and My Blue Heaven. During rehearsals for Kudzu, Chambers became ill with what was subsequently diagnosed as a brain tumor. The Women in Theatre Program, and organization within the Association for Theatre in Higher Education, created the Jane Chambers Playwriting Award in her honor to encourage new plays about women's experiences that have a majority of principal roles for women.