Constance Congdon

Constance S. Congdon (born 1944) is an American playwright and librettist. She has won grants and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the W. Alton Jones Foundation, and the Guggenheim Foundation. She was described by Tony Kushner as "one of the best playwrights our country, and our language, has produced."

The scope of Congdon’s plays has been described as "epic." Her first play had 30 scenes and 57 characters, and her 2001 play Casanova covered 73 years in 19 scenes set between Paris and Venice.

Her most well-known plays include: Tales of the Lost Formicans, Casanova, Lips, Losing Father's Body, The Misanthrope, A Mother, No Mercy, The Servant of Two Masters, Tartuffe and Paradise Street. She has written a number of opera libretti and seven plays for the Children's Theatre Company of Minneapolis. Her playwriting career includes an adaptation of Maxim Gorky’s A Mother with Olympia Dukakis in the lead role.

Congdon was born in Rock Rapids, Iowa. Her first play, Gilgamesh, was produced in 1977. Congdon received her M.F.A. from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 1982. She has taught playwriting at Amherst College since 1993.