– USA playwright Edward Albee, the author of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, has died aged 88, BBC News reports. Albee died after a short illness, according to Holder.
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The death was confirmed by Albee’s personal assistant. He was expelled from boarding school, then thrown out of Valley Forge Military Academy – like J.D. Salinger before him – and dropped out of Trinity College without graduating, or attending classes. He moved to Greenwich Village in New York City soon after, where he worked at various jobs while learning to write plays.
“Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” led the Oscar derby with the most nominations (13), compared to 8 for the film adaptation of another stage play (“A Man for All Seasons”) and “The Sand Pebbles”.
“Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” debuted two years later on Broadway. Also, The Zoo Story, The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia?, and The American Dream and The Sandbox, the latter of which was recently staged by off-Broadway’s Signature Theater last season.
He was arguably America’s greatest living playwright. The Pulitzer Prize committee recommended it for best play that year, but the Pulitzer board rejected the recommendation. I am a writer who happens to be gay’.
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.
Albee’s longtime companion, sculptor Jonathan Thomas, died in 2005.
The writer passed away in his sleep at his home in Montauk.
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“I don’t find that much difference between straights and gays in the problems of life”, he told the New York Times in 1994.
