American playwright Edward Albee died at Long Island near NY on Friday, media reports said.
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The theater world lost an icon Friday when writer Edward Albee died in his NY home at 88 years old. The American writer had diabetes although no cause of his death was given.
Albee’s career began after the death of Eugene O’Neill and after Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams had produced most of their best-known plays.
In interviews, Albee recoiled at the idea of drawing parallels between his works or between his cynical outlook and his unhappy childhood.
He moved to New York’s Greenwich Village in the 1950s, finding a more sympathetic environment in the avant-garde scene, where he wrote “The Zoo Story” that marked his breakthrough in theater.
The play revolves around a boozy, damaged middle-aged couple living on a college campus who wind up antagonizing and oversharing with a younger couple following a university function. The three-time Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright has died at age 88.
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.
Edward Albee was the most influential American playwright of his generation. But others expressed sentiments similar to Albee’s, such as Lea DeLaria, who hosted that year’s ceremony.
The play was made into an award-winning film in 1966 starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. In a blog post, author Sassafras Lowrey wrote that Albee’s message was that “writing from a queer experience was a lesser art form”.
It was initially recommended for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1963, but its nomination was rejected by Pulitzer boardmembers, who objected to the play’s use of profanity and sexual themes. “If it’s merely decorative, it’s a waste of time”.
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Openly gay since his teens, he lost his long-term partner, sculptor Jonathan Thomas, to bladder cancer in 2005.
