EDWARD ALBEE

'Edward Franklin Albee III' (born March 12, 1928) is an American playwright known for works including ''Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?'', ''The Zoo Story'', ''The Sandbox'' and ''The American Dream''. His works are considered well-crafted and often unsympathetic examinations of the modern condition. His early works reflect a mastery and Americanization of the Absurdism that found its peak in works by European playwrights such as Jean Genet, Samuel Beckett, and Eugène Ionesco. Younger American playwrights, such as Pulitzer Prize-winner Paula Vogel, credit Albee's daring mix of theatricalism and biting dialogue with helping to reinvent the post-war American theatre in the early 1960s. Albee's dedication to continuing to evolve his voice — as evidenced in later productions such as ''The Goat or Who is Sylvia'' (2000) — also routinely marks him as distinct from other American playwrights of his era.

Contents

Biography

Plays

Non Dramatic Writings

Quotes

Discography

External links

Biography

Edward Albee was born in Washington, D.C. and was adopted two weeks later and taken to Westchester County, New York. Albee's adoptive father, Reed A. Albee, himself the son of vaudeville magnate Edward Franklin Albee II, owned several theatres, where Edward first gained familiarity with the theatre as a child. His adoptive mother was Reed's third wife, Frances. Albee left home when he was in his late teens, later saying in an interview, "They weren't very good at being parents, and I wasn't very good at being a son." He attended the Rye Country Day School, then the Lawrenceville School, where he was expelled. He attended Valley Forge Military Academy in Wayne, Pennsylvania in 1943 and graduated in 1945 at the age of 17. He studied at Choate Rosemary Hall and graduated in 1946, then attended Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut for a year and a half before being expelled for skipping classes and refusing to attend compulsory chapel in 1947. Perhaps ironically, the less than diligent student later dedicated much of his time to promoting American university theatre, frequently speaking at campuses and serving as a distinguished professor at the University of Houston from 1989 to 2003.
A member of the Dramatists Guild Council, Albee has received three Pulitzer Prizes for drama — for ''A Delicate Balance'' (1967), ''Seascape'' (1975), ''Three Tall Women'' (1994); a Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement (2005); the Gold Medal in Drama from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters (1980); as well as the Kennedy Center Honors and the National Medal of Arts (both in 1996).
Albee is the President of the Edward F. Albee Foundation, Inc., which maintains the William Flanagan Creative Persons Center, a writers and artists colony in Montauk, New York. Albee's longtime partner, Jonathan Thomas, a sculptor, died on May 2, 2005, the result of a two year-long battle with bladder cancer.

Plays

★ ''The Zoo Story'' (1958)

★ ''The Death of Bessie Smith'' (1959)

★ ''The Sandbox'' (1959)

★ ''Fam and Yam'' (1959)

★ ''The American Dream'' (1960)

★ ''Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?'' (1961-62, Tony Award, Grammy Award in 1964 in the Best Documentary, Spoken Word or Drama Recording (Other Than Comedy) category)

★ ''The Ballad of the Sad Cafe'' (1963) (adapted from the novella by Carson McCullers)

★ ''Tiny Alice'' (1964)

★ ''Malcolm'' (1965) (adapted from the novel by James Purdy)

★ ''A Delicate Balance'' (1966) Pulitzer Prize

★ ''Breakfast at Tiffany's'' (1966) (musical, adapted from the novella by Truman Capote)

★ ''Everything in the Garden'' (1967) (adapted from a play by British playwright Giles Cooper)

★ ''Box'' and ''Quotations From Chairman Mao Tse-Tung'' (1968)

★ ''Sandbox'' (1968)

★ ''All Over'' (1971)

★ ''Seascape'' (1974) Pulitzer Prize

★ ''Listening'' (1975)

★ ''Counting the Ways'' (1976)

★ ''The Lady From Dubuque'' (1977-79)

★ ''Lolita'' (adapted from the novel by Vladimir Nabokov) (1981)

★ ''The Man Who Had Three Arms'' (1981)

★ ''Finding the Sun'' (1982)

★ ''Marriage Play'' (1986-87)

★ ''Three Tall Women'' (1990-91) Pulitzer Prize

★ ''The Lorca Play'' (1992)

★ ''Fragments'' (1993)

★ ''The Play About the Baby'' (1996)

★ ''The Goat or Who is Sylvia?'' (2000, Tony Award)

★ ''Occupant'' (2001)

★ ''Knock! Knock! Who's There!?'' (2003)

★ ''Peter & Jerry'' (Act One: Homelife. Act Two: The Zoo Story) (2004)

★ ''Me Myself and I'' ( (2007)

Non Dramatic Writings

★ (Avalon Publishing, 2005)

Quotes

★ "What could be worse than getting to the end of your life and realizing you hadn't lived it?"

★ " A usefully lived life is probably going to be, ultimately, more satisfying." ^[1]

★ "Writing should be useful. If it can't instruct people a little bit more about the responsibilities of consciousness there's no point in doing it."

★ "If you're willing to fail interestingly, you tend to succeed interestingly."

Discography

★ ''Mark Richman & William Daniels in The Zoo Story by Edward Albee - Directed by Arthur Luce Klein'' (LP, Spoken Arts SA 808)

External links

★ Guardian (UK) in-depth profile of Albee from 2004

★ Read Albee's interview at The Paris Review

★ The William Flanagan Memorial Creative Persons Center

★ TonyAwards.com Interviews with Edward Albee

★ Notes on a Colloquy with Edward Albee from Artslynx