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ALBEE (AHL-bee)

American playwright
Common clues: “Seascape” playwright; “A Delicate Balance” playwright; "The Zoo Story" playwright; Pulitzer-winning dramatist; “The Sandbox” dramatist
Crossword puzzle frequency: 3 times a year
News: Tony Winner Glenn Close to Return to Broadway in Edward Albee's A Delicate Balance?
Video: Edward Albee on creativity

A play is fiction - and fiction is fact distilled into truth ~ Edward Albee

Edward Franklin Albee III (born March 12, 1928) is an American playwright known for works including Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, The Zoo Story, and The Sandbox. His works are considered well-crafted and often unsympathetic examinations of the modern condition. His early works reflect a mastery and Americanization of the Absurdism that found its peak in works by European playwrights such as Jean Genet, Samuel Beckett, and Eugene Ionesco. Younger American playwrights, such as Pulitzer Prize-winner Paula Vogel, credit Albee's daring mix of theatricalism and biting dialogue with helping to reinvent the post-war American theatre in the early 1960s. Albee's dedication to continuing to evolve his voice--as evidenced in later productions such as The Goat, or Who is Sylvia? (2000) -- also routinely marks him as distinct from other American playwrights of his era.

Edward Albee photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1961.

Edward Albee was born in Washington, DC and was adopted two weeks later and taken to Westchester County, New York. Albee's adoptive father, himself the son of vaudeville magnate E.F. Albee, owned several theatres, where Edward first gained familiarity with the theatre as a child. Albee left home when he was in his late teens, later saying in an interview, "They weren't very good at being parents, and I wasn't very good at being a son." He subsequently graduated from Valley Forge Military Academy in Wayne, Pennsylvania in 1945 at the age of 17. He graduated from Choate Rosemary Hall and attended Trinity College (Connecticut) for a year and a half before being expelled for skipping classes and refusing to attend compulsory chapel. Perhaps ironically, the less than diligent student later dedicated much of his time to promoting American university theatre, frequently speaking at campuses and serving as a distinguished professor at the University of Houston from 1989 to 2003.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Edward Albee".  

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