The death was confirmed by Albee’s personal assistant.
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Bored at school, Albee said he was self-educated from the day his mother berated him for reading the family’s leather-bound works by Russian authors, previously untouched.
Albee was part of a generation of dramatists that included Eugene O’Neill, Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams.
Often bleakly humorous, his plays explored the darker sides of marriage, religion, raising children, and American life.
“Art should expand the boundaries of the form and, simultaneously, it should change our perceptions”, he told his biographer.
With plays like, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and 1964’s Tiny Alice, Albee made his own presence in the literature world.
The original production ran for 644 performances on Broadway. But it won Albee a Tony Award for Best Play, was adapted into a well-regarded 1966 movie starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, and has been revived frequently.
Albee won a string of awards for “Virginia Woolf“, including a Tony for best play in 1963.
Other notable works include The Zoo Story, A Delicate Balance, The Sandbox, The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia, The Lady from Dubuqe and The American Dream. He was also feted with a special Lifetime Achievement at the Tony Awards in 2005.
His wealthy father was the son of vaudeville theater magnate Edward Franklin Albee II.
Seeing Three Tall Women (WAY too young) made me fall in love w theater.
“The Zoo Story” became the writer’s first piece that was staged.
Albee had a strained relationship with his adoptive parents.
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The first, in 1967, was for “A Delicate Balance“.
