The three-time Pulitzer prize victor was heralded as a “wunderkind” in the early 1960s when his “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” – probably his best-known work – debuted on Broadway in 1962 and won a Tony Award for best play. According to his Albee’s personal assistant, the popular dramatist died after a short illness.
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Considered one of the most important American playwrights of his time, Mr Albee wrote a variety of intense, controversial plays diving into anxieties, disillusionment and death. Director Mike Nichols brought the story to new audiences in 1966 with the Oscar-winning movie starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.
Throughout an up-and-down commercial career over several decades, Albee won three Pulitzer Prizes for best drama.
In 2005 he received a lifetime achievement Tony award and continued to write into his late 70s, premiering his last play, Me, Myself and I, in 2008.
When the play came to the Provincetown Playhouse in Greenwich Village the next year, it helped propel the burgeoning theater movement that became known as Off Broadway.
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The writer passed away in his sleep at his home in Montauk. The three-time Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, Albee has died in suburban New York City at age 88. However, Edward Albee was absent from the contenders’ list.
