Edward Albee
Edward F. Albee was born in Virginia on March 12th 1928, adopted by Reed and Frances Albee. His father was part owner of the Keith-Albee vaudeville circuit.
Albee’s first job was writing continuity dialogue for radio station WNYC. 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.
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 in 1960.
Albee’s first and major “hit” was Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? which opened at Broadway’s Billy Rose Theater on October 3, 1963, starring Uta Hagen and Arthur Hill as the battling George and Martha. It ran for 664 performances and was made into a popular film starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. Like Euguene O’Neill Albee nabbed three Pulitzers, for A Delicate Balance in 1966, Seascape in 1975 and Three Tall Women in 1991. This last seemed to restore his popularity with New York critics and audiences who had been treating him like the unwelcome guests in plays like A Delicate Balance.
The strong reviews of The Play About the Baby during the 2000-2001 season seemed to point to his beating O’Neill’s Pulitzer record. This was not to be, however, and Baby, which like Three Tall Women, opened Off-Broadway had a respectable but limited run. Today Albee remains active, writing, producing and directing his plays, as well as teaching at the School of Theatre of the University of Houston and giving lectures on his work at colleges around the country.
Mr. Albee himself directed the last Broadway revival of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? with the late Colleen Dewhurst, and Ben Gazzara. Thirty years later, in 2005, the British director Anthony Page directed Kathleen Turner and Bill Irwin — with their young guests played by David Harbour and Mireille Enos. It made numerous awards lists in the Best Revival category and for the leads. Even before the finalists were announced, the Tony Awards committee honored the playwright with a Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement.
