Edward Albee | |
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Born |
Virginia, U.S. |
March 12, 1928
Died | September 16, 2016 Montauk, New York, U.S. |
(aged 88)
Occupation | Dramatist |
Nationality | American |
Period | 1958–2016 |
Notable works |
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? The Zoo Story A Delicate Balance The Goat, or Who is Sylvia? |
Notable awards |
Pulitzer Prize for Drama (1967, 1975, and 1994) Tony Award for Best Play (1963 and 2002) National Medal of Arts (1996) Special Tony Award (2005) America Award in Literature (2015) |
Partner |
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Edward Franklin Albee III (/ˈɔːlbiː/ AWL-bee; March 12, 1928 – September 16, 2016) was an American playwright known for works such as The Zoo Story (1958), The Sandbox (1959), Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962), and A Delicate Balance (1966). Three of his plays won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and two of his other works won the Tony Award for Best Play.
His works are often considered as frank examinations of the modern condition. His early works reflect a mastery and Americanization of the Theatre of the Absurd that found its peak in works by European playwrights such as Samuel Beckett, Eugène Ionesco, and Jean Genet.
His middle period comprised plays that explored the psychology of maturing, marriage, and sexual relationships. Younger American playwrights, such as Paula Vogel, credit Albee's daring mix of theatricality and biting dialogue with helping to reinvent the post-war American theatre in the early 1960s. Later in his life, Albee continued to experiment in works such as The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia? (2002).
Edward Albee was born in 1928. He was placed for adoption two weeks later and taken to Larchmont in Westchester County, New York, where he grew up. Albee's adoptive father, Reed A. Albee, the wealthy son of vaudeville magnate Edward Franklin Albee II, owned several theaters. His adoptive mother, Reed's third wife, Frances (Cotter), was a socialite. He would later base the main character of his 1991 play Three Tall Women on his mother, with whom he had a conflicted relationship.