Edward Albee | |
|---|---|
 Albee in 1975 | |
| Born | Edward Franklin Albee III (1928-03-12)March 12, 1928 Washington, D.C., U.S. |
| Died | September 16, 2016(2016-09-16) (aged 88) Montauk, New York, U.S. |
| Education | Trinity College |
| Period | 1958–2016 |
| Notable works | |
| Notable awards | |
| Partner | Jonathan Thomas (esp. 1971; died 2005) |
Edward Franklin Albee III (/ˈɔːlbiː/AWL-bee; March 12, 1928 – September 16, 2016) was an American playwright known for works such asThe Zoo Story (1958),The Sandbox (1959),Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962),A Delicate Balance (1966), andThree Tall Women (1994). Some critics have argued that some of his work constitutes an American variant of whatMartin Esslin identified as and named theTheater of the Absurd.[1] Three of his plays won thePulitzer Prize for Drama and two of his other works won theTony 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 asSamuel Beckett,Eugène Ionesco, andJean Genet.
His middle period comprised plays that explored the psychology of maturing, marriage and sexual relationships. Younger American playwrights, such asPaula 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 asThe Goat, or Who Is Sylvia? (2002).
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.[2] Albee's adoptive father,Reed A. Albee, the wealthy son ofvaudeville magnateEdward Franklin Albee II, owned several theaters. His adoptive mother, Reed's second wife, Frances (Cotter), was a socialite.[3][4] He later based the main character of his 1991 playThree Tall Women on his mother, with whom he had a conflicted relationship.[5]
Albee attended the Rye Country Day School, then theLawrenceville School in New Jersey, from which he was expelled.[3] He then was sent toValley Forge Military Academy in Wayne, Pennsylvania, where he was dismissed in less than a year.[6] He enrolled atThe Choate School (now Choate Rosemary Hall) inWallingford, Connecticut,[7] 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 atTrinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, where he was expelled in 1947 for skipping classes and refusing to attend compulsory chapel.[7]
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."[8] In a 1994 interview, he said he left home at 18 because "[he] had to get out of that stultifying, suffocating environment."[5] In 2008, he told interviewerCharlie 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.[9]
Albee moved into New York'sGreenwich Village,[6] where he supported himself with odd jobs while learning to write plays.[10] His roommate in New York was the composerWilliam Flanagan.[11] Primarily in his early plays, Albee's work had various characters that challenged the image of a heterosexual marriage.[12] Despite challenging society's views about the gay community, he did not view himself as an LGBT advocate.[12] Albee's work typically criticized theAmerican Dream.[12] His first play,The Zoo Story, written in three weeks,[13] was first staged inBerlin in 1959 before premiering Off-Broadway in 1960.[14] His next,The Death of Bessie Smith, similarly premiered in Berlin before arriving in New York.[15]
Albee's most iconic play,Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, opened on Broadway at theBilly Rose Theatre on October 13, 1962, and closed on May 16, 1964, after five previews and 664 performances. The opening night cast featuredUta Hagen.Arthur Hill,George Grizzard andMelinda Dillon.[16] The play won theTony Award for Best Play in 1963 and was selected for the1963 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.[17] The two members of the jury,John Mason Brown andJohn Gassner, subsequently resigned in protest.[18] AnAcademy Award-winningfilm adaptation byErnest Lehman was released in 1966 starringElizabeth Taylor,Richard Burton,George Segal, andSandy Dennis, and was directed byMike Nichols.[19] In 2013, the film was selected for preservation in the United StatesNational Film Registry by theLibrary of Congress as "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".[20]
In 1971 he wroteAll Over, a two-act play originally titled,Death, the second half of a projected double bill with another play calledLife (which later becameSeascape).[21] The play premiered onBroadway at theMartin Beck Theatre withJohn Gielgud directing and starredJessica Tandy,Madeleine Sherwood, andColleen Dewhurst.The New York Times writerClive 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."[22]
In 1974 he wroteSeascape, which won thePulitzer Prize for Drama. It debuted on Broadway withDeborah Kerr andFrank Langella.[23] It was nominated for theTony Award for Best Play losing toPeter Shaffer'sEquus.[24] Clive Barnes ofThe 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 alongsideSamuel Beckett andHarold Pinter.[25]
Albee continued to write plays includingListening (1976),Counting the Ways (1976) before a brief break beforeThe Lady from Dubuque (1980) which had a short run on Broadway.[26] He wrote the three act playThe Man Who Had Three Arms (1983) which was received negatively withFrank Rich ofThe 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."[27]
Albee's plays during the 1980s received mixed reviews with Michael Billington ofThe 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 asArthur Miller andTennessee Williams, he has kept on trucking".[28] Billington wrote of Albee's 1987 play,Marriage Play, "At the end the play achieves a metaphorical resonance by suggesting that marriage is an accumulation of meaningless habits and that "nothing has made any difference".[28]
In 1991 he wrote the playThree Tall Women, a two act play that premiered at theVienna's English Theatre about three unnamed women. The play was revived in 2018 directed byJoe Mantello starringGlenda Jackson,Laurie Metcalf, andAllison Pill.[29] The 2018 production received theTony Award for Best Revival of a Play. Allison Adato ofEntertainment Weekly wrote of the play, "Edward Albee's Three Tall Women, in which a nonagenarian revisits events of her life refracted through both her own dementia and the differing recollections of her younger selves, is a not-quite-memory play filled with regret, resentment, entitlement, various bodily indignities".[30]
Georgia State University English professor Matthew Roudane divides Albee's plays into three periods: the Early Plays (1959–1966), characterized by gladiatorial confrontations, bloodied action and fight to the metaphorical death; the Middle Plays (1971–1987), when Albee lost the favor of Broadway audience and started premiering in the U.S. regional theaters and in Europe; and the Later Plays (1991–2016), received as a remarkable comeback and watched by appreciative audiences and critics the world over.[31]
According toThe New York Times, Albee was "widely considered to be the foremost American playwright of his generation."[32] The less-than-diligent student later dedicated much of his time to promoting American university theatre. He served as a Distinguished Professor of Playwriting and held the Lyndall Finley Wortham Chair in the Performing Arts at theUniversity of Houston. His plays are published byDramatists Play Service[33] andSamuel French, Inc.
Albee established theEdward F. Albee Foundation, Inc. in 1967, from royalties from his playWho's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. The foundation funds theWilliam Flanagan Memorial Creative Persons Center (named after the composerWilliam Flanagan, but better known as "The Barn") inMontauk, New York, as a residence for writers and visual artists.[34]The foundation's mission is "to serve writers and visual artists from all walks of life, by providing time and space in which to work without disturbance."[35]
Albee was gay and stated that he first knew he was gay at age twelve and a half.[36][37]
As a teen in Larchmont, Albee became a close friend of English-born Muir Weissinger Jr. and his family. Albee, along with others, referred to Florence, Muir's mother, as "Mummy". For her part, Albee's mother felt he spent too much time at the Weissinger household. Albee dated Muir's sister, Delphine, and escorted her to her coming-out party. Albee and Delphine had a "long and intense relationship" while it lasted; Albee has said they were "unofficially engaged". Albee kept in touch for a long time with Florence and Muir Weissinger.[38]
Albee insisted that he did not want to be known as a "gay writer", saying in his acceptance speech for the 2011Lambda 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."[39] His longtime partner, Jonathan Richard Thomas, a sculptor, died on May 2, 2005, from bladder cancer. They had been partners from 1971 until Thomas's death. Albee also had a relationship of several years with playwrightTerrence McNally during the 1950s.[40]
Albee died at his home in Montauk, New York on September 16, 2016, aged 88.[40][41][42]
Albee lived in a 6,000-square-foot loft that was a former cheese warehouse in New York's Tribeca neighborhood. At the time of his death Albee held an expansive collection of fine art, utilitarian works and sculptures. Albee was especially interested in artworks created by indigenous cultures in Africa and Oceania.[43]
A member of theDramatists Guild Council, Albee received threePulitzer Prizes fordrama—forA Delicate Balance (1967),Seascape (1975), andThree Tall Women (1994). Albee was elected a Fellow of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1972.[44] In 1985, Albee was inducted into theAmerican Theatre Hall of Fame.[45] In 1999, Albee received thePEN/Laura Pels Theater Award as a Master American Dramatist.[46] He received a SpecialTony Award for Lifetime Achievement (2005);[41] the gold medal in Drama from theAmerican Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters (1980); as well as theKennedy Center Honors and theNational Medal of Arts (both in 1996).[47] In 2009, Albee received honorary degree from the Bulgarian National Academy of Theater and Film Arts (NATFA), a member of the Global Alliance of Theater Schools.[citation needed] In 2008, in celebration of Albee's 80th birthday, a number of his plays were mounted in distinguishedOff-Broadway venues, including the historicCherry Lane Theatre where the playwright directed two of his early one-acts,The American Dream andThe Sandbox.[48]
| Pulitzer Prize | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Year | Category | Project | Result | Ref. |
| 1967 | Pulitzer Prize for Drama | A Delicate Balance | Won | [49] |
| 1975 | Seascape | Won | [49] | |
| 1994 | Three Tall Women | Won | [49] | |
| 2001 | The Play About the Baby | Nominated | [50] | |
| 2003 | The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia? | Nominated | [51] | |
| Tony Awards | ||||
| 1963 | Best Play | Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? | Won | [52] |
| 1964 | The Ballad of the Sad Cafe | Nominated | [53] | |
| 1965 | Best Author | Tiny Alice | Nominated | [54] |
| 1965 | Best Play | Nominated | ||
| 1967 | A Delicate Balance | Nominated | [55] | |
| 1975 | Seascape | Nominated | [24] | |
| 2002 | The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia? | Won | [56] | |
| 2005 | Lifetime Achievement | Received | [57] | |
| Drama Desk Award | ||||
| 1960 | Vernon Rice Award | The Zoo Story | Won | [58] |
| 1975 | Outstanding New Play | Seascape | Nominated | |
| 1976 | Outstanding Director of a Play | Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? | Nominated | |
| 1994 | Outstanding Play | Three Tall Women | Nominated | |
| 2002 | Outstanding New Play | The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia? | Won | |
| 2008 | Special Award | Received | ||
| Grammy Award | ||||
| 1963 | Best Spoken Word Album | Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? | Won | [59] |
| Best Album Notes | Nominated | |||
Honorary awards
Works written or adapted by Albee:[64]
Toni Morrison, recipient of the Nobel Prize, and Edward Albee at a reception prior to the Banquet of the Golden Plate ceremonies during the 2005 International Achievement Summit in New York City.
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