Edward Albee Popular Books

Edward Albee Biography & Facts

Edward Franklin Albee III ( AWL-bee; March 12, 1928 – September 16, 2016) was an American playwright known for works such as The Zoo Story (1958), The Sandbox (1959), Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962), A Delicate Balance (1966), and Three Tall Women (1994). Some critics have argued that some of his work constitutes an American variant of what Martin Esslin identified and named the Theater of the Absurd. Three of his plays won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and two of his other works won the Tony Award for Best Play. His works are often considered frank examinations of the modern condition. His early works reflect a mastery and Americanization of the Theatre of the Absurd that found its peak in works by European playwrights such as Samuel Beckett, Eugène Ionesco, and Jean Genet. His middle period comprised plays that explored the psychology of maturing, marriage and sexual relationships. Younger American playwrights, such as Paula Vogel, credit Albee's mix of theatricality and biting dialogue with helping to reinvent postwar American theatre in the early 1960s. Later in life, Albee continued to experiment in works such as The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia? (2002). Early life Edward Albee was born in 1928. His biological father left his mother, Louise Harvey, and he was placed for adoption two weeks later and taken to Larchmont, New York, where he grew up. Albee's adoptive father, Reed A. Albee, the wealthy son of vaudeville magnate Edward Franklin Albee II, owned several theaters. His adoptive mother, Reed's second wife, Frances (Cotter), was a socialite. He later based the main character of his 1991 play Three Tall Women on his mother, with whom he had a conflicted relationship.Albee attended the Rye Country Day School, then the Lawrenceville School in New Jersey, from which he was expelled. He then was sent to Valley Forge Military Academy in Wayne, Pennsylvania, where he was dismissed in less than a year. He enrolled at The Choate School (now Choate Rosemary Hall) in Wallingford, Connecticut, graduating in 1946. He had attracted theatre attention by having scripted and published nine poems, eleven short stories, essays, a long act play, Schism, and a 500-page novel, The Flesh of Unbelievers (Horn, 1) in 1946. His formal education continued at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, where he was expelled in 1947 for skipping classes and refusing to attend compulsory chapel.Albee left home for good in his late teens. In a later interview, he said: "I never felt comfortable with the adoptive parents. I don't think they knew how to be parents. I probably didn't know how to be a son, either." In a 1994 interview, he said he left home at 18 because "[he] had to get out of that stultifying, suffocating environment." In 2008, he told interviewer Charlie Rose that he was "thrown out" because his parents wanted him to become a "corporate thug" and did not approve of his aspirations to be a writer. Career 1959–1966: The Early Plays Albee moved into New York's Greenwich Village, where he supported himself with odd jobs while learning to write plays. Primarily in his early plays, Albee's work had various representations of the LGBTQIA community often challenging the image of a heterosexual marriage. Despite challenging society's views about the gay community, he did not view himself as an LGBT advocate. Albee's work typically criticized the American Dream. His first play, The Zoo Story, written in three weeks, was first staged in Berlin in 1959 before premiering Off-Broadway in 1960. His next, The Death of Bessie Smith, similarly premiered in Berlin before arriving in New York.Albee's most iconic play, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, opened on Broadway at the Billy Rose Theatre on October 13, 1962, and closed on May 16, 1964, after five previews and 664 performances. The controversial play won the Tony Award for Best Play in 1963 and was selected for the 1963 Pulitzer Prize by the award's drama jury, but the selection was overruled by the advisory committee, which elected not to give a drama award at all. The two members of the jury, John Mason Brown and John Gassner, subsequently resigned in protest. An Academy Award-winning film adaptation by Ernest Lehman was released in 1966 starring Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, George Segal, and Sandy Dennis, and was directed by Mike Nichols. In 2013, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". 1971–1987: The Middle Plays In 1971 he wrote All Over, a two-act play originally titled, Death, the second half of a projected double bill with another play called Life (which later became Seascape). The play premiered on Broadway at the Martin Beck Theatre with John Gielgud directing and starred Jessica Tandy, Madeleine Sherwood, and Colleen Dewhurst. The New York Times writer Clive Barnes wrote, "It is a lovely, poignant and deeply felt play. In no way at all is it an easy play -- this formal minuet of death, this symphony ironically celebrating death's dominion. It is not easy in its structure, a series of almost operatic arias demanding, in their precision, pin-point concentration from the audience, and it is certainly not easy in its subject matter."In 1974 he wrote, Seascape which won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. It debuted on Broadway with Deborah Kerr and Frank Langella. It was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Play losing to Peter Shaffer's Equus. Clive Barnes of The New York Times declared the play "a major event", adding, "As Mr. Albee has matured as a playwright, his work has become leaner, sparer and simpler. He depends on strong theatrical strokes to attract the attention of the audience, but the tone of the writing is always thoughtful, even careful, even philosophic." He compared his work alongside Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter.Albee continued to write plays including Listening (1976), Counting the Ways (1976) before a brief break before The Lady from Dubuque (1980) which had a short run on Broadway. He wrote the three act play The Man Who Had Three Arms (1983) which was received negatively with Frank Rich of The New York Times writing, "isn't a play - it's a temper tantrum in two acts... One of the more shocking lapses of Mr. Albee's writing is that he makes almost no attempt even to pretend that Himself is anything other than a maudlin stand-in for himself, with the disappearing arm representing an atrophied talent."Albee's plays during the 1980s received mixed reviews with Michael Billington of The Guardian writing, "American dramatists invariably end up as victims of their own myth: in a success-crazed culture they are never forgiven for failing to live up to their own early masterpieces. But if Edward Albee has suffered the same cruel fate as Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams, he has kept on trucking". Billington wrote of Albee's 1987 play, Marriage Play, "At the end the play achieve.... Discover the Edward Albee popular books. 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  • The Cambridge Companion to Edward Albee synopsis, comments

    The Cambridge Companion to Edward Albee

    Stephen Bottoms

    Edward Albee, perhaps best known for his acclaimed and infamous 1960s drama Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, is one of America's greatest living playwrights. Now in his seventies, ...

  • Edward Albee synopsis, comments

    Edward Albee

    Matthew Roudané

    Edward Albee (1928–2016) was a central figure in modern American theatre, and his bold and often experimental theatrical style won him wide acclaim. This book explores the issues, ...

  • I Am My Own Wife synopsis, comments

    I Am My Own Wife

    Doug Wright

    I Am My Own Wife is the winner of the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.From the Obie Awardwinning author of Quills comes this acclaimed oneman show, which explores the astonishing tru...

  • Edward Albee synopsis, comments

    Edward Albee

    Bruce Mann

    From the "angry young man" who wrote Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf in 1962, determined to expose the emptiness of American experience to Tiny Alice which reveals his indebtedness ...

  • Exploring Worldviews In Literature synopsis, comments

    Exploring Worldviews In Literature

    Laura Barge

    Exploring Worldviews in Literature is a collection of essays demonstrating the practice of literary criticism from a Christian perspective. In each essay, author Laura Barge compar...

  • Three Plays by Edward Albee synopsis, comments

    Three Plays by Edward Albee

    Edward Albee

    Three acclaimed oneact plays from the early years of the author of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. With the initial productions of The Death of Bessie Smith, The Sandbox, ...

  • Our Lady of 121st Street synopsis, comments

    Our Lady of 121st Street

    Stephen Adly Guirgis

    Stephen Adly Guirgis has been hailed as one of the most promising playwrights at work in America today. A masterful poet of the downtrodden, his plays portray life on New York's ha...

  • Edward Albee und der Amerikanische Traum synopsis, comments

    Edward Albee und der Amerikanische Traum

    Britta Mannes

    „We talk about the American Dream, and want to tell the world about the American Dream, but what is that dream, in most cases, but the dream of material things? I sometimes think t...

  • The Book of Pet Love and Loss synopsis, comments

    The Book of Pet Love and Loss

    Sara Bader

    A powerful collection of quotations by writers, leaders, and legends on the pain of losing a pet and overcoming grief.An animal’s love is deep, uncomplicated, unconditional, and fo...

  • Cat on a Hot Tin Roof synopsis, comments

    Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

    Tennessee Williams

    The definitive text of this American classicreissued with an introduction by Edward Albee (Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and A Delicate Balance) and Williams' essay "PersontoPers...

  • Stretching My Mind synopsis, comments

    Stretching My Mind

    Edward Albee

    America's most important living playwright, Edward Albee, has been rocking our country's moral, political and artistic complacency for more than 50 years. Beginning with his debut ...