Edward Albee Dies at 88

Edward passed away in his sleep at his home in Montauk, Long Island

 

Edward Franklin Albee III March 12, 1928 – September 16, 2016 was an American playwright known for works such as The Zoo Story (1958), The Sandbox (1959), and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962). His works are often considered as well-crafted, realistic examinations of the modern condition. His early works reflect a mastery and Americanisation of the Theatre of the Absurd that found its peak in works by European playwrights such as Samuel Beckett, Eugène Ionesco, and Jean Genet. Younger American playwrights, such as Paula Vogel, credit Albee’s daring mix of theatricality and biting dialogue with helping to reinvent the post-war American theatre in the early 1960s. Later in his life, Albee continued to experiment in works such as The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia? (2002).

According to Magill’s Survey of American Literature (2007), Edward Albee was born somewhere in Virginia (one popular belief is that he was born in Washington, D.C.). He was adopted two weeks later and taken to Larchmont, New York in Westchester County, where he grew up. Albee’s adoptive father, Reed A. Albee, the wealthy son of vaudeville magnate Edward Franklin Albee II, owned several theatres. Here the young Edward first gained familiarity with the theatre. His adoptive mother, Reed’s third wife, Frances (Cotter), tried to raise Albee to fit into their social circles. Albee attended the Clinton High 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. 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 when he was 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.” More recently, 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 become a writer.
 

 
Albee moved into New York’s Greenwich Village, where he supported himself with odd jobs while learning to write plays. His first play, The Zoo Story, was first staged in Berlin. The less than diligent student later dedicated much of his time to promoting American university theatre. Most recently, he served as distinguished professor at the University of Houston, where he taught an exclusive playwriting course. His plays are published by Dramatists Play Service and Samuel French, Inc..
Albee was openly gay and stated that he first knew he was gay at age 12 and a half. He insisted, however, that he did not want to be known as a “gay writer”, stating in his acceptance speech for the 2011 Lambda Literary Foundation’s Pioneer Award for Lifetime Achievement: “A writer who happens to be gay or lesbian must be able to transcend self. I am not a gay writer. I am a writer who happens to be gay.”

Albee’s long time partner, Jonathan Thomas, a sculptor, died on May 2, 2005, from 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? (1961–1962)
The Ballad of the Sad Café (1963) (adapted from the novella by Carson McCullers)
Tiny Alice (1964)
Malcolm (1965) (adapted from the novel by James Purdy)
A Delicate Balance (1966)
Breakfast at Tiffany’s (adapted from the novel by Truman Capote) (1966)
Everything in the Garden (1967)
Box and Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung (1968)
All Over (1971)
Seascape (1974)
Listening (1975)
Counting the Ways (1976)
The Lady from Dubuque (1977–1979)
Lolita (adapted from the novel by Vladimir Nabokov) (1981)
The Man Who Had Three Arms (1981)
Finding the Sun (1983)
Marriage Play (1986–1987)
Three Tall Women (1990–1991)
The Lorca Play (1992)
Fragments (1993)
The Play About the Baby (1996)
Occupant (2001)
The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia? (2002)
Knock! Knock! Who’s There!? (2003)
Peter & Jerry, retitled in 2009 to At Home at the Zoo (Act One: Homelife. Act Two: The Zoo Story) (2004)
Me Myself and I (2007)

A member of the Dramatists Guild Council, Albee received three Pulitzer Prizes for drama—for A Delicate Balance (1967), Seascape (1975), and Three Tall Women (1994). His play Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf was selected for the 1963 Pulitzer Prize by the award’s drama jury, but was overruled by the advisory committee, which elected not to give a drama award at all. Albee was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1972. In 1985, Albee was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame.[9] In 1999, Albee received the PEN/Laura Pels International Foundation for Theatre Award as a Master American Dramatist. He received 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 Honours and the National Medal of Arts (both in 1996). In 2009 Albee received honorary degree a.k.a. “Doctor Honoris Causa” by the Bulgarian National Academy of Theatre and Film Arts (NATFA), a member of the Global Alliance of Theatre Schools.

Albee was the President of the Edward F. Albee Foundation, Inc., which maintains the William Flanagan Memorial Creative Persons Center, a writers and artists colony in Montauk, New York.

In 2008, in celebration of Albee’s eightieth birthday, a number of his plays were mounted in distinguished Off Broadway venues, including the historic Cherry Lane Theatre. The playwright directed two of his one-acts, The American Dream and The Sandbox, there. These were first produced at the theater in 1961 and 1962, respectively.