Arts > Theatre > Playwrights > USA

Edward Albee   1928-2016

Edward Albee, Playwright of a Desperate Generation, Dies at 88

Video        NYT        SEPT. 16, 2016

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/17/
arts/edward-albee-playwright-of-a-desperate-generation-dies-at-88.html

Edward Albee    1928-2016

foremost American

playwright of his generation,

whose psychologically astute

and piercing dramas explored

the contentiousness of intimacy,

the gap between

self-delusion and truth

and the roiling desperation

beneath the facade

of contemporary life

(...)

Mr. 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.

From them

he inherited the torch

of American drama,

carrying it through

the era of Tony Kushner

and “Angels in America”

and into the 21st century.

He introduced himself

suddenly and with a bang,

in 1959,

when his first produced play,

“The Zoo Story,”

opened in Berlin

on a double bill

with Samuel Beckett’s

“Krapp’s Last Tape.”

A two-handed one-act

that unfolds in real time,

“The Zoo Story” zeroed in

on the existential terror

at the heart

of Eisenhower-era complacency,

presenting

the increasingly menacing intrusion

of a probing, querying stranger

on a man reading

on a Central Park bench.

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.

In 1962,

Mr. Albee’s Broadway debut,

“Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?,”

the famously scabrous portrait

of a withered marriage,

won a Tony Award for best play,

ran for more than a year and half

and enthralled and shocked

theatergoers with its depiction

of stifling academia

and of a couple

whose relationship

has been corroded

by dashed hopes,

wounding recriminations

and drink.

The 1966 film adaptation,

directed by Mike Nichols

and starring Richard Burton

and Elizabeth Taylor,

turned the play

into Mr. Albee’s

most famous work;

it had, he wrote

three decades later,

“hung about my neck

ike a shining medal

of some sort

— really nice

but a trifle onerous.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/17/
arts/edward-albee-playwright-of-a-desperate-generation-dies-at-88.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/18/
theater/Edward-Albee-a-playwright-who-saw-the-minotaur-inside-all-of-us.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/18/
theater/reactions-to-edward-albees-death.html

https://www.theguardian.com/stage/gallery/2016/sep/17/
edward-albee-playwright-in-pictures-died-88

https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2016/sep/17/
edward-albee-career-highs-lows-more-highs

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/17/
arts/edward-albee-playwright-of-a-desperate-generation-dies-at-88.html

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/09/16/
462191417/playwright-edward-albee-who-changed-and-challenged-audiences-dies-at-88

https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2016/sep/16/
edward-albee-dies-playwright-whos-afraid-virginia-woolf

Related > Anglonautes > Arts

theatre

Related > Anglonautes > Vocapedia > Arts

theatre, standup comedy, magic