Edward Albee
Edward
Albee, in full Edward Franklin Albee (b.
March 12, 1928, Washington, D.C., U.S.),
American dramatist and theatrical
producer best known for his play Who’s
Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962), which
displays slashing insight and witty
dialogue in its gruesome portrayal of
married life.
Albee
was the adopted child of a father who
had for a time been the assistant
general manager of a chain of vaudeville
theatres then partially owned by the
Albee family. At the time of Albee’s
adoption, though, both his parents were
involved with owning and showing saddle
horses. He had a difficult relationship
with his parents, particularly with his
mother, whom he saw as distant and
unloving. Albee grew up in New York City
and nearby Westchester county. He was
educated at Choate School (graduated
1946) and at Trinity College in
Hartford, Connecticut (1946–47). He
wrote poetry and an unpublished novel
but turned to plays in the late 1950s.
Among
Albee’s early one-act plays, The Zoo
Story (1959), The Sandbox (1959), and
The American Dream (1961) were the most
successful and established him as an
astute critic of American values. But it
is his first full-length play, Who’s
Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (film 1966),
that remains his most important work. In
this play a middle-aged professor, his
wife, and a younger couple engage one
night in an unrestrained drinking bout
that is filled with malicious games,
insults, humiliations, betrayals, savage
witticisms, and painful, self-revealing
confrontations. Virginia Woolf won
immediate acclaim and established Albee
as a major American playwright.
It was
followed by a number of full-length
works—including A Delicate Balance
(1966; winner of a Pulitzer Prize),
which was based in part on his mother’s
witty alcoholic sister, and Three Tall
Women (1994; Pulitzer Prize). The latter
play deals with Albee’s perceptions and
feelings about his mother and is a
remarkable portrait achieved by
presenting the interaction of three
women, who resemble each other, at
different stages of life. Among his
other plays are Tiny Alice (1965), which
begins as a philosophical discussion
between a lawyer and a cardinal;
Seascape (1975; also winner of a
Pulitzer Prize), a poetic exploration of
evolution; and The Play About the Baby
(1998), on the mysteries of birth and
parenthood.
Albee
continued to dissect American morality
in plays such as The Goat; or, Who Is
Sylvia? (2002), which depicts the
disintegration of a marriage in the wake
of the revelation that the husband has
engaged in bestiality. In Occupant
(2001), Albee imagines the sculptor
Louise Nevelson being interviewed after
her death. Albee also expanded The Zoo
Story into a two-act play, called Peter
and Jerry (2004). The absurdist Me,
Myself, & I (2007) trenchantly analyzes
the relationship between a mother and
her twin sons.
In
addition to writing, Albee produced a
number of plays and lectured at schools
throughout the country. He was awarded
the National Medal of Arts in 1996. A
compilation of his essays and personal
anecdotes, Stretching My Mind, was
published in 2005. That year Albee also
received a Tony Award for lifetime
achievement.
