Biography of Constance S Congdon

Constance Congdon's most well-known play, Tales of the Lost Formicans, has been produced in Helsinki, Brixton, Manchester, Cairo, Tokyo, Berlin and in over 200 productions all over the United States, as well as in New York City by the Women's Project. It was premiered at The Actor's Theater of Louisville, as well as her play about the birth of the atom bomb, No Mercy. Her plays, Casanova and Dog Opera were both premiered at the Joseph Papp Public Theatre in New York. She has also written librettos for four operas: The Yellow Wallpaper and John Updike's S., both composed by Ronald Perera.; The Strange Life of Ivan Osokin composed by Peter Gordon; and Earthrise, composed by the Pulitzer-prize-winning composer Lew Spratlan. She also did six plays for children for the Children's Theatre Company in Minneapolis and an adaptation of Mark Twain's novel, The Gilded Age, into a play for the Acting Company, for a national tour. Her play about the first woman President, Lips, was commissioned by Speilberg's Dreamworks through Playwrights Horizons and was produced at Primary Stages in New York in 1998. The Automata Pietà, a play she wrote for the American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco's Young Conservatory was remounted at the Magic Theatre in 2000. Moontel Six and Nightengales were also commissioned and produced by the Young Conservatory. Nightengales was then produced at The Egg at Theatre Royale Bath, England, in 2006. The Profile Theatre in Portland, Oregon, devoted an entire season to her works and their production of No Mercy included a new companion piece by Congdon called One Day Earlier-this completed her telling of the discovery of nuclear fission and the making of the first atom bomb. The American Conservatory Theatre commissioned a new verse version of The Misanthrope from Congdon for their 2000-2001 season, an adaptation of Gorky's Vassa Zelezhnova for Olympia Dukakis (retitled, The Mother) and, an adaptation of Moliere's The Imaginary Invalid, which opened in June, 2007. So Far: The Children of the Elvi, received its northwest premiere at the Key City Players., Port Townsend, Washington in the same month. Congdon completed a new verse version of Moliere's Tartuffe and it received its world premiere, in the fall of 2006, at Two River Theatre in Red Bank, New Jersey. Broadway Play Publishing, Inc. publishes the acting editions of most of her plays-Dog Opera is published by Samuel French, although the play is also in The Actor's Book Of Gay And Lesbian Plays. Congdon's adaptation of Goldoni's A Servant Of Two Masters, which premiered at the Hartford Stage Company and at The Intiman Theatre in Seattle, is part of the 2007 season at The Colorado Shakespeare Theatre in Boulder, Colorado. Her newest plays, Dark Bridge Mountain and Paradise Street are unproduced at this date, as well as two screenplays-Ursa Major, with Doug Trumbull for IMAX and Guerilla Dating Tactics for Castle Rock. Other plays produced include Gilgamesh, her first play, Losing Father's Body, Boarders: Three Short Plays With An Epilogue by the Landlady, and her first professionally proeduced play, Native American.. A book of four of her plays Tales Of The Lost Formicans And Other Plays is published, quite beautifully, by Theatre Communications Group, Inc. Her new verse version of Tartuffe will appear in the Norton Anthology of Drama and also in a single-volume critical edition, also by Norton. Congdon is currently working on a play on Krushchev, based on William Taubman's Pulitzer-Prize biography. Congdon is an alumna of New Dramatists, a member of PEN and currently teaches playwriting at Amherst College.