Edward Albee, a famous American playwright, whose works resembled realism in the modern society, died at the age of 88 in NY, on Friday.
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In 1962, Mr. Albee’s Broadway debut, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Albee’s assistant was quoted as saying by BBC that he died on Friday at his home on Long Island near NY. The American writer had diabetes although no cause of his death was given.
Albee described a playwright as “someone who lets his guts hang out on the stage”, and the innards of his own works included a powerful anger as he pushed themes such as alienation, resentment and the dark underside of life in the 1950s.
Actress Mia Farrow said: “Edward Albee was one of the great playwrights of our time”.
He won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama three times, for his plays “A Delicate Balance”, “Seascape,” and “Three Tall Women“.
Born in 1928, he was adopted by a wealthy suburban NY couple. According to Holder, Albee died after a short illness.
Albee was honoured by the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in 1996 for his lifetime contributions. Clinton also awarded Albee a National Medal of the Arts that year.
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.
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He spent 30 years with his partner Jonathan Thomas, from 1971 till Thomas’s death in 2005.
