Albee mined a privileged but unhappy childhood for his dramatic art.
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Albee’s career spanned five decades. He continued writing well into his later years.
It was after that play that Albee began drawing comparisons to the likes of August Wilson, Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams. “Amongst the greatest playwrights of our time and possibly all time”, former Book of Mormon and Frozen star Josh Gad wrote.
As an author, Albee helped Americanize the European Theater of the Absurd, embracing both existentialism and metaphysical elements. But others expressed sentiments similar to Albee’s, such as Lea DeLaria, who hosted that year’s ceremony.
Born Edward Harvey on March 12, 1928, in what some say was Virginia and others the United States capital Washington, Albee was given up for adoption shortly afterward.
An unconventional student, Albee attended several schools, including The Choate School in Wallingford, Conn., from which he graduated in 1946, and Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., from 1946 to 1947.
Nearly 21, he fled home after a fight that erupted when he left the family car’s headlights on overnight.
“I couldn’t write for a long time”, Albee told The New York Times in 2007. I am not a gay writer.
Getting it staged was harder. Written in 1958, it was first produced in Berlin, translated into German.
Despite favorable European reviews, the play wasn’t welcomed in NY. Norman Mailer cheered alone at an Actors Studio reading, calling it “the best (expletive) one-act play I’ve ever seen”. Albee, a three-time Pulitzer victor, was famous for challenging audiences with his works, starting with 1960’s The Zoo Story.
With plays like, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and 1964’s Tiny Alice, Albee made his own presence in the literature world. In 2005 he received a special Tony Award for lifetime achievement. His masterwork was a controversial 1962 Broadway hit and later spawned an Oscar-winning 1966 film of the same name starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.
Albee always considered himself a writer first and foremost.
In 1996 he described the effect of the play’s success: “I find Virginia Woolf hung about my neck like a shining medal of some sort – really nice but a trifle onerous”. Many objected to Martha and George’s filthy language.
Often bleakly humorous, his plays explored the darker sides of marriage, religion, raising children, and American life.
“A writer who happens to be gay or lesbian must be able to transcend self”, he once remarked.
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Albee’s longtime partner was sculptor Jonathan Thomas who died in 2005 from bladder cancer. His best known work was “Who’s Afraid…” The three-time Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright has died in suburban New York City at age 88.
