Whos Afraid of Edward Albee? :: Biography Biographies Essays

Whos Afraid of Edward Albee? Edward Albee was considered the chief playwright of the discipline of the Absurd when his first successful one-act experimental plays emerged. The Zoo Story, The Death of Bessie Smith, The Sandbox, and Quotations from lead Mao Tse-Tung were all released during Albees thirties between 1959 and 1968 (Artists 1-2). Edward Albee was born in the nations capitol on March 12, 1928, and his career has brought him three Pulitzer Prizes over four decades, the first for A Delicate Balance in 1966 and the most recent in 1994 for terce Tall Women. While Albees original works established him as a leading voice in Americas Theater of the Absurd, his more mature plays were object lesson of traditional playwrights like Eugene ONeill and August Strindberg. Unlike many successful writers, the puerility of Albee was not one of deprivation. On the contrary, Albee was adopted at the age of cardinal weeks by a millionaire family. From that point on he knew a life-time of wealth and privilege. He resided with his family in Westchester, New York. His childhood experience was kinda remote from that of many writers who knew squalor and deprivation. As one magazine word said regarding his childhood courses, It was a time of servants, tutors, riding lessons, winters in Miami, summers sailplaning on the Sound there was a Rolls Royce to bring him, smuggled in lap robes, to matinees in the city an inexhaustible wardrobe housed in a closet as big as a room. Albee has never do any explicit comments about the happiness of his childhood. His father was believed, however, to be reign by his wife, who was considerably upstarter than her husband and an avid athlete (Biography 1). His grandfather was one of the major figures in the development of the razzmatazz of American show-business and the proprietor of a famous chain of vaudeville houses. Albee was named after him and this lineage gave him a great deal of exposure to plays and theater people at a young age. Albee was not very adept at schoolwork though he showed promise as a writer from a young age. He dropped out of Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, after a year and a half to pursue a writing career broad time in New York. However, while at Trinity, Albee did gain theater experience by playing a variety of characters in plays produced by the college drama department.