Constance Congdon

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

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.

Goldoni's eighteenth-century masterpiece is an enduring story of love, passion, and mistaken identity. Young Venetian Clarice can't marry her lover, Silvio. She had been betrothed to Rasponi, who appears to have returned from the dead to claim her. But the Rasponi who appears is actually Beatrice, Rasponi's sister who is in disguise as her brother and has come to Venice to find her suitor, Florinda. Complications arise when a servant greedily seeks employment with both the disguised Beatrice and Florinda and spends the rest of the play trying to serve two masters while keeping the two unaware of the other's presence. The play is based on the Italian Renaissance theater style, Commedia dell arte, and reinvigorated the genre, which is so heavily based on carnival, while bringing to it an element of realism, mishaps, mix-ups, confusions, disguises and mistaken identity that come with the style. "Director Christopher Bayes' and star Steven Epp's adaptation on Carlo Goldoni's 18th-century Commedia dell'arte piece ... is pure comedy gold." --Broadway World Seattle"Sublimely directed by Christopher Bayes -- provides an equivalent bowlful of joy ... deliriously happy-making version of Carlo Goldoni's THE SERVANT OF TWO MASTERS. Bayes and company, egged on by adapter Constance Congdon's buoyant script ... consistently locate Goldoni's sweet spot." --The Washington Post"... revels in the transformative power of theater. The laughter would be quite enough to propel THE SERVANT OF TWO MASTERS onto a theater lover's must-see list. But then there's the magic. Now that's theater " --The New York Times"... an uproarious, unapologetically lowbrow, compulsively enjoyable excursion into the outer realms of farce." --The Boston Globe"It begins in elegance. Two Italian workmen stumble upon the remnants of an abandoned theater; when they open a trunk, fireflies flutter out and turn into the stars above a Venice of yore. But from then on we're mostly in the broadly colorful land of commedia dell'arte: a world of crafty servants and passionate lovers and notably bad communication ... stock characters, one-liners, slapstick, masks, songs and snatches of anachronistic improvisation." --Time Out New York "Think the Three Stooges meets Family Guy meets a bawdy clown troupe, with a few musical numbers tossed in for good measure and a tendency to beat a dead horse of a joke until it miraculously stands back on its feet and becomes funny again ... The gonzo glee of the performances holds it all together ... while the whole thing doesn't add up to more than goofy fun, sometimes that is just what you need." --Brooklyn Paper "Laughter is the best medicine sometimes. This is one of those times." --Lore Croghan, Brooklyn Daily Eagle" A] raucously entertaining farce ... boy, do we laugh. Every formula for comedy is either turned on its head or played to its full predictive hilarity. And when the unpredictable moments happen -- this archetype of commedia dell'arte requires a fair amount of improvisation and ad-libbing -- the risk of going off-script is richly rewarded ... For the jaded theatergoer, THE SERVANT OF TWO MASTERS] provides all the things the wearied mind desires: longing, love, song, dance and the simple beauty of laughter." --OffOffOnline

"Moli re penned his final play, the slapstick comedy THE IMAGINARY INVALID more than 450 years ago, and it is not only amazing that this lesser-known play still stands the test of time, but how visionary this comedy, currently being seen in Constance Congdon's new adaptation at the American Conservatory Theatre, has become. Or should we really be surprised in this age of plentiful medication-as doctors scribble prescriptions faster than it takes to gulp a handful of pills down with a glass of water-that THE IMAGINARY INVALID feels as relevant today as it did when healers swore by snake oil and holy water rather than Nexium and Zoloft? Moreover, Congdon has folded in a healthy dose of present-day nuances and innuendos, as well as beefed up the plot. The result is an entertaining and jovial romp...The great Frenchman's last contribution to the world's stage-he died onstage while playing Argan-proves that time has stood still when it comes to the eternal nature of the hypochondriac." Tiffany Maleshefski, TheaterMania.com "Lean, clean and comically bent...a bright evening of amusement and occasional hilarity." Dennis Harvey, Variety

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

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

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