Three-time Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Edward Albee died in suburban New York City at age 88.
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His provocative and often unforgiving takes on life in the USA earned him a reputation as one of the great American dramatists.
Edward Albee wrote one of the greatest dramas of the twentieth century, but when “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?’ was adapted from the stage to screen, he didn’t get the credit he deserved at the 1966-67 Oscars”. Born in Washington D.C.in 1928, Albee grew up in a household with adoptive parents who, he said, disapproved of his dream of becoming a writer; it was when he moved to New York City’s Greenwich Village that he learned the art of playwriting.
Often bleakly humorous, his plays explored the darker sides of marriage, religion, raising children, and American life. Half the committee’s members reportedly resigned in support of Albee and no Pulitzer prize for drama was awarded that year. One of Albee’s final plays, The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia? was performed on Broadway in 2002, and won another Tony.
In 2005 he received a lifetime achievement Tony award and continued to write into his late 70s, premiering his last play, Me, Myself and I, in 2008. According to Holder, Albee died after a short illness.
Seeing Three Tall Women (WAY too young) made me fall in love w theater.
Other noted works included “Seascape“, which Albee directed when it opened on Broadway in 1974 and had an absurdist twist – an elderly couple are joined on the beach by two human-sized talking lizards as they consider their relationships.
The first, in 1967, was for “A Delicate Balance“.
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Edward Albee was the most influential American playwright of his generation.
