From the masterworks to the rarely and almost never seen - and including some hidden gems from the Albee canon - this MONTHLY series will be followed by a conversation with the cast, director, and Jakob Holder, Executive Director of The Edward F. Albee Foundation and Mr. Albee's longest serving assistant.
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NEXT PLAY:
NEXT PLAY:
Three Tall Women
Three Tall Women
WEDNESDAY MAY 14TH @ 7:30PM
Debonair Music Hall 1409 Queen Anne Rd. Teaneck NJ
PREVIOUS READINGS:
The Sandbox (1959) & The American Dream (1960)
The Man Who Had Three Arms (1983)
Malcolm (1966)
Listening (1976) & Counting the Ways (1976)
Fragments (1993)
An exclusive fundraiser workshop presentation ‘The State of Unions’
Marriage Play, Counting the Ways, and The Perfect Marriage (monologue)
The Play About The Baby (2002)
The Lady from Dubuque (1980)
Everything in the Garden (1980)
At Home At The Zoo (2008)
Me Myself & I (2007)
All Over (1970)
ABOUT ALBEE
ABOUT ALBEE
In 1958--just weeks from his 30th birthday--Edward Albee sat down at his typewriter. Having tried his hand at prose (two abandoned texts he fondly dubbed “The Two Worst American Novels Ever Begun”) and poetry (a collection he discarded so as to “save poetry from them”), Albee tried writing a play. The result: a two character, one-act called The Zoo Story.
Albee’s play made its way to West Berlin where, in 1959, The Zoo Story enjoyed its successful world premiere--in German—paired with Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape. In 1960 the play found its first American home at The Provincetown Theatre in Greenwich Village, and Albee entered the spotlight as a promising American playwright.
Over the next couple of years the prolific Albee completed several more one-act plays, including: The Death of Bessie Smith (1959), The Sandbox (1959), Fam and Yam (1959), and The American Dream (1960).
Then, in 1962, Albee wrote the vitriolic and incendiary Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, shocking audiences with his bravery in peeling back the masks of society.
In 1963, Albee wrote The Ballad of the Sad Café--the first of several adaptations including Malcolm (1965), Everything in the Garden (1967), and Lolita (1979).
1964 saw the challenging allegory Tiny Alice; in 1966, Albee won his first Pulitzer Prize for A Delicate Balance; and in 1968 he presented the experimental Box and Quotations from Chairman Mao-Tse Tung. The 70s saw productions of All Over (1971); Seascape (1974)--Albee’s second Pulitzer winner; Listening (1975); Counting the Ways (1976); and The Lady from Dubuque (1977-79).
In 1981 Albee greatly offended critics with The Man Who Had Three Arms, and subsequently suffered a decade-long near-blockade from the American stage. He spent these years focusing on foreign productions, teaching, and penning two one-acts: Finding the Sun (1982) and Marriage Play (1986-87).
But in 1994 Albee came back into the fore with Three Tall Women, netting his third Pulitzer win. The 90s heralded his return to continued success with the plays Fragments (1993) and The Play About the Baby (1996).
In 2002 he once again shocked audiences with his startling play The Goat, or Who is Sylvia?, which Albee referred to as “Notes Toward A Definition of Tragedy” and with which he intended to “test the limits of the audiences’ tolerance.”
His late career works included Occupant (2001) — an investigation into the life and mind of his close friend, the sculptor Louise Nevelson; At Home at the Zoo (2004) — an expansion of the world presented in his first play The Zoo Story, with the addition of a preceding act called “Homelife” — and his final completed play: Me, Myself & I (2007).
Among many other accolades, Albee was the winner of 4 Tony awards (including a special Lifetime Achievement Tony awarded him in 2005), the Kennedy Center Honors, and The National Medal of Arts.
In September, 2016, Edward Albee passed away peacefully in his home in Montauk, NY, — the haven where he contentedly spent several decades of summers walking along the beach, talking with his characters, and putting his singular pen to paper that would have a massive and lasting impact on the American Theatre.
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