The 88-year-old, whose most famous works include A Delicate Balance and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
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Anna Kendrick had a personal, influential anecdote about seeing one of Albee’s works. Michael McKean wrote: “There was only one Edward Albee”.
See a collection of reactions below.
Born in Virginia in 1928 and adopted at two weeks by a NY family with whom he never got along, Albee left home at a young age because they objected to his playwriting ambitions.
Although the stage version was selected by a Pulitzer Prize jury for the 1963 drama award, the Pulitzer advisory board overruled the jurors because of the play’s controversial nature.
“Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” debuted two years later on Broadway.
His wealthy father was the son of vaudeville theater magnate Edward Franklin Albee II.
He also garnered Pulitzers for “Seascape” in 1975, followed “Three Tall Women” in 1994.
Albee’s longtime partner, sculptor Jonathan Thomas, died in 2005. The story of a middle-aged professor and his wife, who insult and humiliate each other during a night of drinking with a younger couple, shocked audiences with its raw language and dark humor.
In more than 25 plays Albee probed American culture, poking and prodding social mores with his shocking and sharp-tongued wit.
He was the recipient of a number of awards, including the National Medal of the Arts and the Kennedy Center Honors in 1966.
Albee sparked controversy in LGBT circles in 2011 when accepting Lambda Literary’s Pioneer Award, which recognizes groundbreaking LGBT authors.
“He was unanimously hailed as the successor to Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, and Eugene O’Neill”.
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In the 1950s, Albee was romantically involved for five years with another playwright who would go on to great fame and acclaim, Terrence McNally. In a blog post, author Sassafras Lowrey wrote that Albee’s message was that “writing from a queer experience was a lesser art form”. In “The Goat or Who is Sylvia?” the main character falls in love with a goat.
