Albee died on Friday at his home in Montauk, New York, after what his personal assistant said was a short illness.
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On Twitter, actress Mia Farrow called Albee “one of the great” playwrights of our time, while fellow playwright Lynn Nottage said she would “miss his wit, irreverence and wisdom”.
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? was later adapted into an Oscar-winning movie directed by Mike Nichols and starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton as a troubled married couple, and it was most recently revived on Broadway for another Tony-winning turn in 2012.
The play, too controversial for a Pulitzer, painted a scathing portrait of a decaying marriage and solidified Albee’s place in theater history.
Among his over 30 notable works are The Zoo Story, A Delicate Balance, Three Tall Women, Seascape and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Albee sparked controversy in LGBT circles in 2011 when accepting Lambda Literary’s Pioneer Award, which recognizes groundbreaking LGBT authors. “I don’t think being gay is a subject, any more than being straight is a subject”, he told a San Francisco conference of gay writers in 1991. He observed that no one would describe Arthur Miller as a “straight playwright”. But he never wanted to be known as a ‘gay writer’. “The shit hits the fan”, Albee said in an interview with Playbill in 2002.
The 2000s saw a pair of major Broadway revivals of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Born in Virginia in 1928 and adopted at 18 days old, Albee grew up in Westchester County outside NY.
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Albee had a troubled relationship with his parents and was expelled from several private preparatory schools, and also was expelled from Trinity College in CT. He then moved to New York City’s Greenwich Village to hone his writing craft.
