Edward Albee, the three-time Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, has died at his home near NY aged 88.
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Legendary playwright Edward Albee, widely considered one of the greats of his generation, died at the age of 88, on 16 September, at his home in Montauk. “Most people want tidy, frivolous stuff”, Albee told the Los Angeles Times in 2002, “so they can go home and not worry about what they’ve seen”.
When the play came to the Provincetown Playhouse in Greenwich Village the next year, it helped propel the burgeoning theater movement that became known as Off Broadway. The show was panned at both its Boston tryout and on Broadway, where it closed following a brief run.
But Albee was a fierce and committed advocate for writers who put his fame and reputation in the service of worldwide writers’ causes. “Seeing Three Tall Women (WAY too young) made me fall in love w theater”, she tweeted.
Albee won a Tony Award for the piece, which was also selected by the drama jury for a Pulitzer, but was not awarded the prize. His other successes include “The Play About the Baby” (1998) and “The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia?”.
The writer, who grew up in Westchester County N.Y, received a Tony for lifetime achievement in 2005.
Albee was adopted shortly after birth by a wealthy NY family that sent him to elite schools – two of which expelled him – but he had no desire for social status.
It has a violent conclusion but helped set the tone for Albee’s raw and uncompromising works to come.
For several years, Albee had been working on his latest play, Laying an Egg, which was to be presented at Signature.
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Openly gay since his teens, he lost his long-term partner, sculptor Jonathan Thomas, to bladder cancer in 2005.
