CONSTANCE
CONGDON
Constance has been called "one of the best playwrights our country and our language has ever produced" by playwright Tony Kushner in Kushner's introduction to her collection Tales of the Lost Formicans and Other Plays. In addition to Tales of the Lost Formicans, which has had hundreds of productions, world-wide, Congdon's plays include: Casanova, Dog Opera, both premiered by the Public Theater, Losing Father’s Body (Portland Stage (Maine), Lips, (Primary Stages), Native American, (Portland Stage (Maine) and Lyric Hammersmith Studio), A Mother, starring Olympia Dukakis, and a new verse version of The Misanthrope, both commissioned and produced by American Conservatory Theater. The Imaginary Invalid followed. Also at ACT: Moontel Six, The Automata Pietà, and Nightingales (later at Theatre Royale Bath’s Youth Theatre). Congdon’s No Mercy, and its companion piece, One Day Earlier; were part of the 2000 season devoted to Congdon at the Profile Theatre. She has also written a number of opera libretti and seven plays for the Children's Theatre Company of Minneapolis. Congdon's plays have been produced throughout the world, including Cairo, Tokyo and Berlin. Her new verse version of Tartuffe is included in the Norton Anthology of Drama, and is already out in a single-volume Norton Critical edition. Her short play, written for the Red Bull Theater in NYC, If This Be a Bad Play, Then the Devil Is In It. She’s an alum of New Dramatists, member of The Dramatists Guild and received the Lilly Award for lifetime achievement in the theater as well as being picked as an LMDA Legacy Playwright. Congdon was literary manager at The Hartford Stage Company for eight years, taught playwriting at the Yale School of Drama but her home has been Amherst College where she was, until retirement, Playwright-in-Residence for 25 years.
NEW PLAYS BY
CONSTANCE CONGDON
WATER PLAY
A farmer in a corner of Colorado, on land his family has farmed for four generations, faces loss of everything, including his livelihood, because of continued drought which is also affecting the rest of the community. Plans for wind farms, a large residential development, and golf club, funded by foreign money are proposed solutions to the drought. Meanwhile relationships between family and friends fracture. What can they do to hold on to their ancestral home and protect their community?
PARADISE STREET
A deeply intelligent, provoking, and witty play, Paradise Street wrestles with important questions of class and gender in this country. It takes you for a wild ride through the transformation of several characters dealing with what feminism has done for, and to, their lives.
