Edward+Albee

** Edward Franklin Albee III **

(b. 1928) An American playwright dealing mostly in the absurdist style modeled after Samuel Beckett. He is best known for: The Zoo Story and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

After leaving his parents' home to settle in Greenwich Village he spend years holding a variety of jobs -- including three years as a Western Union messenger. They supplemented his trust and were chosen because they were dead ends and would not interfere with his primary vocation: writing.
 * Life **

 His artistic endeavors were filled with frustration. He lived for nearly half a year in Italy where he wrote a novel which has never been published. W. H. Auden whom he met in New York, read some of his poetry and suggested that he write pornographic verse as an exercise to improve his style. In New Hampshire he met Thornton Wilder who advised him to turn his efforts toward drama upon which Albee steeped himself in everything even mildly important.

 On his thirtieth birthday in 1958, he quit his job with Western Union and wrote //The Zoo// //Story// in three weeks. After being rejected by several New York producers, the play had its premiere //The Zoo Story's// premiere at the Schiller Theater Werkstatt in Berlin on September 28, 1959. Four months later it was paired with Samuel Beckett's //Krapp's Last Tape// at the Provincetown Playhouse in Greenwich Village. Its reception was favorable and won Albee the recognition as a formidable talent. In 1960 it won the Vernon Rice Memorial Award.

A member of the Dramatists Guild Council, Albee has received three Pulitzer Prizes for drama—for A Delicate Balance, Seascape, and Three Tall Women; a Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement; the Gold Medal in Drama from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters; as well as the Kennedy Center Honors and the National Medal of Arts.

He currently is a distinguished professor at the University of Houston, where he teaches an exclusive playwriting course. His plays are published by Dramatists Play Service and Samuel French, Inc.

Albee can be classified with theatrical experimenters whose work jumped the boundaries of American drama. His style embraces existentialism, abusurdism as well as the metaphysical. His plays tend to puzzle. While not easy "night out" fare they are also full of satirically witty and sharp dialogue. The Albee audience consists of those who value being challenged and appreciate theater that, if it existed, would fit into the School of Anti-Complacency. His failures at the box office are as well known as his critical successes. As described by the playwright himself his plays are" an examination of the American Scene, an attack on the substitution of artificial for real values in our society, a condemnation of complacency, cruelty, and emasculation and vacuity, a stand against the fiction that everything in this slipping land of ours is peachy-keen."
 * Theme and Style**

He currently is a distinguished professor at the University of Houston, where he teaches an exclusive playwriting course.

@http://www.curtainup.com/albee.html @http://www.csustan.edu/english/reuben/pal/chap8/albee.html @http://greenstone.bf.refer.org/collect/revu/index/assoc/HASH0162.dir/B-007-01-039-049.pdf
 * Sources**

The Zoo Story (1958)  The Death of Bessie Smith (1959)  The Sandbox (l959)  Fam and Yam (1959)  The American Dream (1960)  Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1961-62, Tony Award)  Tiny Alice (1964)  A Delicate Balance (1966, Pulitzer Prize)  Box and Quotations From Chairman Mao Tse-Tung (1968)  All Over (1971) <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> Seascape (1974, Pulitzer Prize) <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> Listening (1975) <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> Counting the Ways (l976) <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> The Lady From Dubuque (1977-78) <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> Another Part of the Zoo (1981) <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> The Man Who Had Three Arms (1981-82) <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> Finding the Sun (1982-83) <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> Marriage Play (1987) <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> Three Tall Women (1991, Pulitzer Prize) <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> Fragments (1993) <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> The Lorca Plays (1995) <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> The Play About the Baby (2001) The Goat - or - Who Is Sylvia? (2002) Occupant (2002) Peter and Jerry (Act One: Homelife. ACT Two: The Zoo Story) (2004)
 * List of Theatrical Works**

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; line-height: normal;">Edward F. Albee Foundation <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; line-height: normal;">New York Time's coverage of Albee Biography
 * Links**