The death was confirmed by his personal assistant and director of the Edward F. Albee Foundation, Jakob Holder, who did not reveal the cause, according to United States media reports.
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He burst onto the theatre scene in 1958 at age 30 with The Zoo Story, which portrayed disaffection and class struggle. He made his Broadway debut in 1962, with the landmark, Tony-winning Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? The shocking trash-talking, boozy depiction of a tortured academic couple, George and Martha, was eventually a hit.
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? was adapted into a film in 1966 starring Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor.
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.
Born March 12, 1928, Albee was adopted shortly thereafter and grew up in Larchmont, N.Y.
His adoptive parents, Reed and Francis Albee, were wealthy from businesses in vaudeville and motion pictures and changed his name to Edward Franklin Albee III, according to the Edward Albee Society.
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.
Albee’s first play The Zoo Story set the tone for much that followed although his writing would become increasingly more nuanced, exchanging the confrontational conceit of the absurd for a more emotionally probing exploration of contemporary relationships.
Albee bought a big, white barn – “The Barn” – in Montauk on Long Island and launched the Edward F. Albee Foundation in 1967 to serve as a residence-retreat for writers and visual artists.
Albee went on to produce dozens of plays, all of which dealt with isolationism, dashed hope, and frustration with contemporary, post-World War II America.
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Albee was part of a generation of dramatists that included Eugene O’Neill, Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams. Running 582 performances, Albee took home Obie and Drama Desk Awards.
