A longtime activist for women’s theater and lesbian theater, Gage was named National Winner of the Nancy Dean Distinguished Playwright Award, given annually at the Sisters on State Lesbian Theatre Conference in New York. Her collection of plays, The Second Coming of Joan of Arc and Other Plays, was named national finalist for the 1995 Lambda Literary Award in drama. Her one act play, Harriet Tubman Visits a Therapist, was a national winner of the 1996 Perishable Theatre Women’s Playwright Festival in Providence, R.I. In 1988, she won the Oregon Playwrights Award from the Oregon Institute of Literary Arts, and she was named contributing editor to the national feminist quarterly On the Issues, which featured her on a cover in 1995.