Who's Afraid Of Edward Albee?

"You gotta have swine to show you where the truffles are."

I have performed in 2 Albee pieces, playing Tobias in A Delicate Balance & Leslie in Seascape (where I played a talking lizard, really). I loved both of these roles & I appreciated Albee’s take on relationships & the interactions between members of a couple, his common theme. 3 Pulitzer Prizes, 3 Tony Awards, & numerous other honors are testimony to the importance & influence of playwright Edward Albee. His 50+ year career took off quickly with The Zoo Story in 1959, & was cemented with the 1962 Broadway success of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, & continued into the 21st century with the Broadway production of The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia? Albee has scored more great successes than most playwrights. Among his 30+ plays: A Delicate Balance, Seascape, Tiny Alice, Three Tall Women & The Play About the Baby. Openly gay Albee is a stalwart political liberal, longtime member of the Dramatists Guild, & has a 15-year affiliation with the University of Houston where he conducts a playwriting workshop each spring.

Albee was with his partner sculptor Jonathan Thomas for 35 years, until Thomas’ death in 2005, at 59. “I was expecting to die way before Jonathan did,” Mr. Albee said. “He was 18 years younger than I was, & the whole idea was that when I got to be my age, he’d be taking care of me, you know? But life doesn’t always work out the way it’s supposed to. You know, we had such a good, long relationship: 35 years. That’s a long time, a life in itself. Of course that makes it worse, but at the same time you can’t just say, ‘How dare you go away from me?’ — which is an attitude that a lot of people get. ‘How dare you die!’ There’s got to be a lot of ‘Thank you’ too. ‘Thank you for being alive & being with me for so long."  Check out the very readable & fascinating  Edward Albee- A Singular Journey by Mel Gussow  Albee turns 82 today. He continues to write & teach.