Kirjahaku

Comedy / Characters: 5 male, 2 femaleScenery Requirements: Simple setPeter and Madeline have been friends since they were teenagers in Queens. They have Manhattan apartments and separate unsatisfactory sex lives. Though more loving than most couples and searching for partners, they are incompatible: he is gay. Maddi is overweight and drawn to men who treat her badly. He hides behind snappy retorts and skepticism. Maddie's alcoholic mother, Peter's father, lovers, pickups and friends with A

This witty and passionate play explores the story of a man with Alzheimer's and at the same time turns into "a travel guide to Middle America conducted by aliens from outer space." The play has a wonderful comic sensibility, but this is a chillingly painful play addressing postmodern society's collective nervous breakdown. "If not the best new play of recent years, surely this is the most imaginative. Constance Congdon's brilliant Off-Broadway script wryly deflects the story of a man with Alzheimer's disease into a travel guide to Middle America conducted by aliens." -William Henry III, Time "Constance Congdon's TALES OF THE LOST FORMICANS is a treat in so many ways - starting with its deliciously wry title ... you shouldn't miss it: Congdon is a new voice, and her innumerable small triumphs are achieved with a freshness of spirit, with a humor and charm so distinctively individual, that one just wants to hear more and more from her ... Congdon's aliens are a fluidly shifting metaphor for her own complex relation to the subject of her drama, a lower-middle suburban family coping with three generations' worth of stress simultaneously ..." -Michael Feingold, Village Voice "... a savagely uncompromising play of searching insights, biting wit and all too recognizable home truths ... There are laughs, wit and humor, but this is a chillingly painful play. Congdon is a terrific playwright with sure command of language and her subject ..." -Polly Warfield, Drama-Logue "Congdon's writing creates dialogue that crackles with wit, imagination and incisive passion ..." -A J Esta, Drama-Logue

An adaptation of Gorky's classic black comedy, VASSA ZHELEZNOVA, A MOTHER concerns a family's stern, penny-pinching matriarch who will do anything for her family. "... Dark, invigoratingly sardonic...Constance Congdon's MOTHER is as uncompromisingly savvy as it is bitingly funny... MOTHER is an exhilarating blend of one of Chekhov's dysfunctional provincial families run through the wringer of Joe Orton's iconoclastic comedy. It's also Maxim Gorky through and through, providing a canny look at Gorky as a dramatic bridge between Chekhov and Brecht. Congdon's A MOTHER is adapted from Gorky's play VASSA ZHELEZNOVA...MOTHER is] as much an enlightening rediscovery as an exciting new play. Vassa, a kind of proto-Mother Courage, is the head of a family one generation removed from serfdom and facing a crisis. The husband with whom she's built a fairly successful peat-mining and tile-making business is dying upstairs. Without a will, all their possessions will pass to their two sons-the uselessly self-pitying Pavel and the slothful, self-indulgent Semyon, a man who can no longer fit into any of his clothes except pajamas. Congdon's dialogue is crisp, her Gorky-derived characters captivating and her wit devilishly sharp..." Robert Hurwitt, San Francisco Chronicle

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.

I have always loved the story in Henry James' novel, Washington Square, and I needed to find something for a young Hispanic actress I wanted to work with, so with Ron Bashford's help, we adapted the story. As we worked on it, we found that it fit really well in the early Sixties, on the verge of the huge social revolution. This time period also made sense because the female lead was trapped in the Fifties by her conservative mother, a successful woman who was ashamed of having a half-Hispanic child. Sometimes, when you're working on a play, things fall in place-the backstory for our play (I say "our" because Ron Bashford was such a close collaborator) arose effortlessly out of the story we were presenting. As the last scene takes place, the young Hispanic daughter hears the beginning of a Sixties protest and leaves the house to join them.Constance Congdon