Edward Albee

Edward Albee was born in Washington, DC on March 12, 1928. When he was two weeks old, Albee was adopted by millionaire couple Reed and Frances Albee. The Albees named their son after his paternal grandfather, Edward Franklin Albee, a powerful producer who had made the family fortune as a partner in the Keith-Albee Theater Circuit.

Young Edward was raised by his adoptive parents in Westchester, New York. Because of his father's and grandfather's involvement in the theatre business, Albee was exposed to theatre and well-known personalities throughout his childhood. From early on, Albees mother Frances tried to groom her son to be a respectable member of New York society. The Albees' affluence meant that Albee childhood was filled with servants and tutors. The family Rolls Royce took him to afternoon matinees, he took riding lessons, vacationed in Miami in the winter, and learned to sail in Long Island in the summer.

In 1940, twelve-year-old Albee entered the Lawrenceville School, a prestigious boys' preparatory school. During his high school days, he shocked school officials by writing a three-act sex act called Aliqueen. At the age of fifteen, the Lawrenceville School dismissed Albee for cutting classes. Hoping to inspire his son in some discipline,Reed Albee enrolled Albee at the Valley Forge Military Academy. Within a year, Valley Forge had dismissed Albee as well.

Ultimately, Albee attended Choate from 1944 to 1946. Even as a teenager, Edward Albee presented himself as a prolific writer. In 1945, his poem "Eighteen" was published in the Texas literary magazine Kaleidoscope. His senior year at Choate, Edward's Albee first published play appeared in the school literary magazine.

After graduating from Choate, Albee enrolled at Trinity College, a small liberal arts school in Hartford, Connecticut. While there Edward got on his mother nerves by associating with artists whom she found unacceptable. During his days at Trinity College, Albee gained lots of theatre experience although it was as an actor, rather than a writer. During his sophomore year, in 1947, nineteen-year-old Albee was dismissed from yet another school. This time, Trinity College claimed that he had failed to attend Chapel and certain classes.

Despite his mother's objections, Albee moved to New York City's artsy Greenwich Village at the age of twenty. He supported himself by writing music programs for the radio. In 1953, young Albee met playwright Thornton Wilder. Later, he credited Wilder with inspiring him to become a playwright. Over the next decade, Albee lived on the income of his grandmother's trust fund and held jobs as an office boy, record salesman, and Western Union messenger.

In 1958, Albee wrote his first major play, a one-act entitled The Zoo Story. When no New York producer would agree to stage it, Albee sent the play to an old friend in New York. The play was first produced in Berlin. After its success abroad, American theatre producer Alan Schneider agreed to produce The Zoo Story. This also help Albee with his connections in the theatre business. Immediately, Albee became obvious as a leader of a new theatrical movement in America. His success was in part predicated on his ability to straddle the two different traditions of American theatre - the traditional and the activist, combining the realistic with the surreal . Althoygh, critics of Albee can rightfully see him as a successor to American playwrights Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, and Eugene O'Neill while at the same time unmistakably influenced by European playwrights like Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter. Albee has also called Ring Lardner, James Thurber, and Jean Genet important influences on his writing.

Throughout the following years, Albee strengthened his reputation with a series of one-act plays, including The Death of Bessie Smith and The Sandbox, which he dedicated to his beloved grandmother, in 1960. In 1961, The American Dream dealed with themes that would be drawn upon in Albee's later career. That same year, Albee adapted an unsuccessful production of Melville's short story Bartleby with his friend William Flanagan.

Despite the success of his original work, Albee's adaptation, Carson McCuller's The Ballad of the Sad Cafe in 1963 and James Purdy's Malcolm in 1965 have not been critically or popularly successful. Critics described them as being motionless representations of literary works, simply transplanting existing scenes from the books to the stage.

Albee's real successes have always came from his original and absurdist dramas. His first three-act drama and the play for which he is best known, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, was produced in New York in 1962. Immediately it became popular and controversial. When its nomination for a Pulitzer was not accepted unanimously by the prize committee, two members of the Pulitzer Prize committee resigned. Nevertheless, the play received the Tony Award and New York Drama Critics Circle Award.

After the failed McCullers adaptation in 1963, Albee's original drama, a dream play called Tiny Alice, opened in New York. That same year, Albee joined with two friends in creating an absurdist group called "Theater 1964," which produced, among other things, Beckett's