Edward Albee

Edward Albee, photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1961. Library of Congress. From Outcyclopedia, the free and queer encyclopedia. Edward Franklin Albee (born March 12, 1928) is a leading American playwright, for many the most important one alive. He was born in Washington, DC and was adopted two weeks later and taken to Westchester County, New York. Albee's father owned a chain of theatres, where Edward would hang out, but he only began writing plays when he was 30. Albee graduated from Valley Forge Military Academy in Wayne, Pennsylvania in 1945. In 1948 he left his rich, privileged, but largely loveless family life to live in Greenwich Village, an area famous for its gay and artistic communities. His first play, The Zoo Story, appeared in 1958. His first success was also the play for which he is best known, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Critics have long likened the characters of George and Martha to a bickering gay couple, an analogy Albee himself has frequently refuted. Plays by Albee which inarguably do contain gay themes or subtexts include Tiny Alice and Three Tall Women. Edward Albee's plays are decidedly unique; one of his main influences has been Samuel Beckett and he is credited with being one of the first American playwrights of the school of thought known as Absurdism. His style is not as surreal as many Absurdists, but Albee's plays reflect the philosophy that life is inherently absurd. Albee is a member of the Dramatists Guild Council, and President of the Edward F. Albee Foundation, Inc. He received the Gold Medal in Drama from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters in 1980, and in 1996 the Kennedy Center Honors and the National Medal of Arts. Plays The Zoo Story (1958) The Death of Bessie Smith (1959) The Sandbox (1959) Fam and Yam (1959) The American Dream (1960) Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1961-62, Tony Award) The Ballad of the Sad Cafe (1963) (adapted from the novel by Carson McCullers) Tiny Alice (1964) Malcolm (1965) (adapted from the novel by James Purdy) A Delicate Balance (1966, Pulitzer Prize) Everything in the Garden (1967) (adapted from a play by British playwright Giles Cooper) Box and Quotations From Chairman Mao Tse-Tung (1968) All Over (1971) Seascape (1974, Pulitzer Prize) Listening (1975) Counting the Ways (1976) The Lady From Dubuque (1977-79) Lolita (adapted from the novel by Vladimir Nabokov) The Man Who Had Three Arms (1981) Finding the Sun (1982) Marriage Play (1986-87) Three Tall Women (1990-91, Pulitzer Prize) The Lorca Play (1992) Fragments (1993) The Play About the Baby (1996) The Goat, or Who is Sylvia? (2000, Tony Award) Occupant (2001) Peter & Jerry (Act One: Homelife. Act Two: The Zoo Story) (2004) External links: GLBTQ: Edward Albee Edward Albee Bibliography Is Anyone Afraid of Edward Albee? Edward Albee: A Singular Journey Entry revised 26 January, 2005, using material from the Wikipedia article, "Edward Albee." All text is available for use under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. (see Copyrights for details). DISCLAIMER: This is not an adult site, and does not contain any pornographic images or material. Any references to sex or other adult material or behavior is made from a purely academic standpoint. Images used on this site are credited whenever possible, and any whose copyright status is in dispute will be gladly removed or credited upon request. Not all persons listed on this site are or were openly homosexual, but reasonable conclusions about their sexuality may and has been made from diaries, letters, and other writings and accounts made by them and/or those who knew them. Several others are heterosexual and are included here for the impact, whether positive or negative, they have made on queer culture and history.