Edward Albee

Long acclaimed by critics as "America's most important dramatist still writing," Edward Albee's award-winning plays are repeatedly produced in theaters throughout the world.

Edward Albee continues to write plays and direct some of his earlier ones. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, perhaps Albee's most widely known work, is one of the most frequently performed plays created in recent time by any American dramatist. It has been translated into many foreign languages and was made into a movie starring Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. When this play was first produced in 1962, Richard Watts wrote, "It is the most shattering drama I have seen since O'Neill's A Long Day's Journey Into Night," adding that "Mr. Albee can without fulsome exaggeration be placed high among important dramatists of contemporary world theater.

A Delicate Balance was Edward Albee's first Pulitzer Prize winner. Max Lerner characterized it as a play portraying "through barbed talk and polished interaction, the prim disease of our time and our society, which is neither violence nor materialism nor alienation, but, quite simply, emptiness."

Edward Albee's second Pulitzer Prize winner, Seascape, was described by Brendan Gill in The New Yorker as "the most exquisitely written" of all Albee's plays. "He calculated not only every immaculate line of dialogue but every word, every caesura; when the actors fall silent, we hold our breath and wait, as we wait on the reading of some superb long poem." Of Albee's All Over, Samuel Hirsch wrote: "It restores faith in American theater and has re-established Edward Albee as our foremost dramatist."

A good play is defined by Albee as one "with something to say and the ability to say it."

He believes that "a play should bring its audience some special sense of awareness of the times, alter and shape that awareness in some significant manner." An Albee lecture has the same mission.

Albee's third Pulitzer winning play, Three Tall Women, opened in New York on April 13, 1994, and has been published in book form by Penguin-Dutton.

Edward Albee, who grew up in a famed theatrical family, started seeing plays at five and began writing at six -- first poetry, then fiction, including two unpublished novels. At 25, he stopped writing and did not resume until the 30 when he produced The Zoo Story, The Sandbox, and The American Dream, among others. Then in 1962 came Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, bringing to Albee towering dominance on the American Theater scene and international fame.

Albee has been winning richly deserved praise for his performances as a lecturer and platform personality at colleges, universities, and literary festivals.

Programs

A discussion of the state of American theater, its problems, its strengths, its future.

With commentary

How writers write, conceive ideas, develop them and ultimately find markets.

Discussion, informally, of basic theatrical principles which may be illustrated by

a mock-up of a scene from an Albee play or through participation in the final

rehearsal of a student production of an Albee play presented in celebration of the

playwright's visit.

Special note: These workshops are restricted to no more than 50 persons at each

workshop and are intended for students with serious interest in creative writing

and in theater.

Plays Directed by Edward Albee:

THE ZOO STORY (1961 and after, off-Broadway and tours)

THE AMERICAN DREAM (1962 and after, off-Broadway and tours)

SEASCAPE (1975 Broadway)

WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? (1976 Broadway revival, 1989 L.A. revival featuring Glenda Jackson and John Lithgow)

LISTENING and COUNTING THE WAYS (1977 American premiere)

PLAYS by Shepard, Williams, Mamet (English Theatre, Vienna, Austria, 1985)

ALBEE DIRECTS ALBEE (all of the one-act plays; tours)

MARRIAGE PLAY (World premiere, English Theatre, Vienna, 1987; American premiere, Alley Theatre, Houston, and McCarter Theatre, Princeton, N.J. 1991-92)

KRAPP'S LAST TAPE and OHIO IMPROMPTU, by Samuel Beckett (Alley Theatre, Houston, 1991)

THREE TALL WOMEN (World premiere, English Theatre, Vienna, 1991)

HAPPY DAYS, by Samuel Beckett (University of Houston, 1993)

FRAGMENT (World premiere, Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati, 1993)

SAND (three one-act plays) performed by the Signature Theatre Company - opened Off- Broadway on 2/4/94

Recipient of the Following Awards:

1960 The Vernon Rice Award for THE ZOO STORY

1961 Foreign Press Association Award for THE AMERICAN DREAM

1963 Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Plays for

WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF?

1966 The Pulitzer Prize for A DELICATE BALANCE

1975 The Pulitzer Prize for SEASCAPE

1980 Gold Medal in Drama from Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters

1994 The Pulitzer Prize for THREE TALL WOMEN

1996 The Tony Award (revival) for A DELICATE BALANCE

1996 Kennedy Center Honoree

1996 Recipient, National Medal of Art

Mr. Albee is a Member of the Following Organizations: The Dramatists Guild Council

P.E.N. American

The American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters

The Edward F. Albee Foundation, Inc. -- President

International Theatre Institute (I.T.I.) -- American President