Profile of Edward Albee on Famous Like Me

Edward Franklin Albee III (born March 12, 1928) is a leading American playwright known for intelligent, well-crafted and often unsympathetic examinations of the modern condition. His early works reflect a mastery and Americanization of the Absurdism that found its peak in works by European playwrights such as Jean Genet, Samuel Beckett, and Eugene Ionesco. Younger American playwrights, such as Pulitzer Prize-winner Paula Vogel, credit Albee's daring mix of theatricalism and biting dialogue with helping to reinvent the post-war American theatre in the early 1960s. Albee's dedication to continuing to evolve his voice--as evidenced in later productions such as The Goat, Or Who Is Sylvia? (2000) -- also routinely marks him as distinct from other American playwrights of his era.

Edward Albee was born in Washington, DC and was adopted two weeks later and taken to Westchester County, New York. Albee's adoptive father, himself the son of vaudeville magnate E.F. Albee, owned several theatres, where Edward first gained familiarity with the theatre as a child. Albee left home when he was in his late teens, later saying in an interview, "They weren't very good at being parents, and I wasn't very good at being a son." He subsequently graduated from Valley Forge Military Academy in Wayne, Pennsylvania in 1945 at the age of 17. He graduated from Choate Rosemary Hall and attended Trinity College (Connecticut) for a year and a half before being expelled for skipping classes and refusing to attend compulsory chapel. Perhaps ironically, the less than diligent student later dedicated much of his time to promoting American university theatre, frequently speaking at campuses and serving as a distinguished professor at the University of Houston from 1989 to 2003.

A member of the Dramatists Guild Council, Albee has received three Pulitzer Prizes for drama — for A Delicate Balance (1966), Seascape (1974), Three Tall Women (1990-1991); 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 Honors and the National Medal of Arts (both in 1986).

Albee is the President of the Edward F. Albee Foundation, Inc., which maintains the William Flanagan Creative Persons Center (a writers and artists colony in Montauk, NY). Albee's longtime partner, Jonathan Thomas, a sculptor, died on May 2, 2005, the result of a two year-long battle with bladder cancer.

Plays

• The Zoo Story (1958)
• The Death of Bessie Smith (1959)
• The Sandbox (1959)
• Fam and Yam (1959)
• The American Dream (play) (1960)
• Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1961-62, Tony Award)
• The Ballad of the Sad Cafe (1963) (adapted from the novel by Carson McCullers)
• Tiny Alice (1964)
• Malcolm (1965) (adapted from the novel by James Purdy)
• A Delicate Balance (1966)
• Everything in the Garden (1967) (adapted from a play by British playwright Giles Cooper)
• Box (play) and Quotations From Chairman Mao Tse-Tung (1968)
• All Over (1971)
• Seascape (1974)
• Listening (play) (1975)
• Counting the Ways (1976)
• The Lady From Dubuque (1977-79)
• Lolita (adapted from the novel by Vladimir Nabokov)
• The Man Who Had Three Arms (1981)
• Finding the Sun (1982)
• Marriage Play (1986-87)
• Three Tall Women (1990-91)
• The Lorca Play (1992)
• Fragments (1993)
• The Play About the Baby (1996)
• The Goat, or Who is Sylvia? (2000, Tony Award)
• Occupant (play) (2001)
• Peter & Jerry (Act One: Homelife. Act Two: The Zoo Story) (2004)

Non Dramatic Writings

• Stretching My Mind: Essays 1960-2005 (Avalon Publishing, 2005)

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