Edward Albee: "The Playwright vs. The Theater"
Document Type
Metadata Only
Date
10-4-2001
Venue
Webb University Center - North and South Cafeterias
Lecture Series
President's Lecture Series; Annual Literary Festival
Description
Edward Albee is a three-time Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright for his plays "Three Tall Women," "A Delicate Balance" and "Seascape. He won the 1996 National Medal of the Arts
Albee was best known for works such as The Zoo Story (1958), The Sandbox (1959), Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962), A Delicate Balance (1966), and Three Tall Women (1994). Some critics have argued that some of his work constitutes an American variant of what Martin Esslin identified and named the Theater of the Absurd.Three of his plays won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and two of his other works won the Tony Award for Best Play.
His works are often considered frank examinations of the modern condition. His early works reflect a mastery and Americanization of the Theatre of the Absurd that found its peak in works by European playwrights such as Samuel Beckett, Eugène Ionesco, and Jean Genet.
His middle period comprised plays that explored the psychology of maturing, marriage, and sexual relationships. Younger American playwrights, such as Paula Vogel, credit Albee's mix of theatricality and biting dialogue with helping to reinvent postwar American theatre in the early 1960s. Later in life, Albee continued to experiment in works such as The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia?
Media Type
VHS
Repository Citation
Albee, Edward, "Edward Albee: "The Playwright vs. The Theater"" (2001). President's Lecture Series. 59.
https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/pls/59
Comments
A 1/2" VHS copy of this lecture is available in the Special Collections & University Archives Department of Old Dominion University Perry Library. Call #: LD4331.A57 2001h