Tales of the Lost Formicans by Constance S. Congdon

First published: 1989

First produced: 1988, at the Byrdcliffe Theater, Woodstock, New York

Type of plot: Comedy; science fiction

Time of work: The late twentieth century

Locale: Suburban Midwest America

Principal Characters:

• Cathy, a recently divorced single mother
• Eric, her teenage son
• Jim, her father, a former construction worker
• Evelyn, her mother
• Judy, and
• Jerry, her friends
• Aliens, creatures from far into the future

The Play

The curtain rises on Jerry lying on his back staring at the night sky through binoculars. Two people in sunglasses enter and unroll a large star map. One points to a spot on the map and tells the audience “You are here.” These three characters exit, leaving the stage empty except for a kitchen table and chair. A disembodied voice begins describing the chair as though it were an ancient and mysterious object, while one of the people in sunglasses enters and points to various parts of the chair. Thus, with a minimum of explanation, Congdon telegraphs the play’s general structure: It is a documentary about contemporary Earth civilization presented by aliens from far into the future.

Throughout the play the aliens continue to deliver a running commentary on the human action. This commentary is a source of comic irony, since the aliens often misinterpret human activities yet also offer off-kilter insight into human nature. In general, the human action, the play-within-a-play, is presented in an impressionistic manner, with many abrupt changes in time and place and very little exposition.

Cathy, the central character in the human story, is recently divorced and has just moved, with her teenage son Eric, to live with her parents, Evelyn and Jim. Moving from New York to a suburban neighborhood in the Midwest has angered Eric and, during the first act, he vents his frustration in a variety of ways. Moreover, Cathy discovers that things are not all well with her parents. Jim has become forgetful, and Evelyn is worried that he may be seriously ill. Adding to Cathy’s feelings of displacement are the changes that have overtaken the neighborhood where she grew up. Her childhood friend Judy is all that remains of those days, and the two women bond over discussions of wayward children and former husbands. The story arc of the first act traces the increasing severity of Jim’s symptoms. At first he is almost comical—he mistakes lipstick for chapstick, for instance—but it is soon apparent that he is suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. Jim’s story climaxes midway through the act when he becomes confused at his job on a construction site and is fired. Afterward, Cathy has a brief encounter with Jerry, who happens to be a conspiracy theorist and is the only character aware of the aliens. Jerry becomes infatuated with Cathy, but she finds him disturbing. As the act comes to a close, Eric announces that he is returning to New York. A brief scene follows in which Judy sings a nonsense lullaby to her two children, while aliens abduct Jerry.

Act 2 opens with Jim lucidly describing his experiences as a builder. However, Cathy reveals that this image of Jim is only a dream she recently had. Evelyn then decides that driving Jim out West will somehow cure him. Evelyn, Cathy, and Jim set out but get lost and must return home, where Jim is soon institutionalized. Shortly afterward, Cathy learns that Eric, instead of being with his father, is actually lost without a trace. Cathy then visits Jim at a nursing home and learns that Jerry is a caregiver there. Jerry, in his official role, has lost his nervous, suspicious demeanor, and his compassion for the patients charms Cathy. She later visits him, but at the point of becoming intimate, Jerry reverts to his paranoid fantasies and Cathy leaves. The play then climaxes with the simultaneous return of Eric and the announcement of Jim’s death. At this point, it is also announced that a group of teenagers has set fire to the local mall. Cathy, Judy, Evelyn, and Eric gather to watch the blaze. Suddenly, Evelyn and Cathy put on sunglasses, taking on the identity of aliens. They explain to the audience that they were both, long ago, part of an earth race called the Formicans. Cathy and Evelyn then sing Judy’s lullaby, as Jerry walks onstage with a gun. He lies on his back and prepares to shoot himself but is lulled to sleep by the song.

Dramatic Devices

Structuring the play as though it were an alien documentary about humans is a bold dramatic move, and one through which Congdon achieves many narrative and thematic ends. The aliens’ voice-overs, and the way they halt and reverse the action when they feel it is necessary, give the play an air of detached irony. This emotional distance allows Congdon to present the essentially tragic material of the human characters’ lives in a comic manner. The mock-documentary framework also enhances the way the characters’ plights work metaphorically. The aliens’ commentary regularly reminds the audience that Cathy and her circle of family and friends are representative examples of humanity. Thus, while the audience is emotionally affected by the story of Cathy and her family, it is also always aware that their struggles are symbolic of larger truths.

The mock-documentary framework also allows Congdon great freedom in the way she arranges the play’s scenes. Since, in essence, the pacing of the play is in alien hands, there is no need for a strictly chronological approach. Indeed, time is drastically telescoped in the play, and events that logically must have played out over months or weeks can transpire quickly without Congdon having to continually reestablish proper time. Likewise, Congdon can liberally use abrupt cuts in the action and montagelike sequences without worrying about disrupting the logical continuity of the play. She can, for instance, take Jim from his own kitchen to nearly being hit by a truck with no transition at all. Similarly, she can have Judy, at home, singing a lullaby to her children, and at the same time show the aliens abducting Jerry. It is important to note, however, that Congdon uses these chronological shifts and juxtapositions not only as entertaining and sometimes jarring dramatic devices, but also to reinforce the play’s thematic concern with loss. In Tales of the Lost Formicans, the world, and the people and things inhabiting it, are literally fleeting.

Congdon bolsters these themes of loss and impermanence with her spare use of scenery and props. While the details of specific productions are up to the director (Congdon has reported once seeing a production in which every object onstage was blue), the play’s production notes state that the stage settings should be sparse. Again, this allows Congdon a great deal of freedom. The action can range from kitchen to construction site to nursing home to shopping mall very rapidly with no need for the reconfiguration of scenery. More important, the spare setting reinforces the theme that the physical world is impermanent and constantly changing.

Critical Context

Tales of the Lost Formicans is not only the most widely acclaimed and frequently performed of Congdon’s plays; it is also an excellent introduction to her work. It displays, in abundance, all of the hallmarks of her style and examines the major themes common to her work. Her plays, for instance, often focus on contemporary social mores. Casanova (pr. 1989, pb. 1991) surveys the history of sexuality, and the short play New (pr. 2001) looks at the relationship between the United States and Asia. Her pieces are also distinguished by her mordant humor, which often serves to leaven her take on dark subjects, such as the threat of nuclear holocaust, the subject of No Mercy (pb. 1985, pr. 1986). Most important, Tales of the Lost Formicans displays Congdon’s inventive approach to staging and her experiments with innovative narrative structures.

It is Congdon’s creative narrative techniques that have won her the reputation as one of the most significant contemporary American playwrights. Her use of montage, multiple narratives, and nonlinear plots—all fully evident in Tales of the Lost Formicans—makes her a quintessentially postmodern writer. Indeed, her work in the late 1980’s established her as one of the first important American postmodern dramatists. As such, she served as an important bridge between the avant-garde playwrights who came of age in the 1960’s, such as Sam Shepherd and Edward Albee, and more innovative later playwrights such as Tony Kushner and Paula Vogel. Kushner, in fact, has cited Tales of the Lost Formicans as a direct influence on his landmark, Pulitzer Prize-winning two-part play Angels in America (pr. 1991, 1992; pb. 1992, 1993).

Sources for Further Study

Hussey, Susan. “Constance Congdon: A Playwright Whose Time Has Come.” Organica, Winter, 1990.

Kushner, Tony. Introduction to Tales of the Lost Formicans and Other Plays. New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1994.

Seller, Tom. “Acquisitive Minds.” Theater 26 (1995): 106-117.

Solomon, Alisa. “Formicans, Call Home.” Village Voice 35 (May 1, 1990): 116.

Wilde, Lisa. “Trying to Find a Culture: An Interview with Connie Congdon.” Yale Theater 22, no. 1 (Winter, 1990).

Willingham, Ralph. Science Fiction and the Theatre: Contributions to the Study of Science Fiction and Fantasy. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1993.