Edward Albee calls his work "an examination of the American Scene, an attack on the substitution of artificial for real values in our society, a condemnation of complacency, cruelty, and emasculation and vacuity, a stand against the fiction that everything in...
[more]Edward Albee calls his work "an examination of the American Scene, an attack on the substitution of artificial for real values in our society, a condemnation of complacency, cruelty, and emasculation and vacuity, a stand against the fiction that everything in this slipping land of ours is peachy-keen." Accordingly, his plays have not always achieved popular success. Their patent portrayal of such difficult themes as domination and submission, disillusionment, the inherent violence of relationships, and illusion versus reality primarily set out to challenge the minds, not win the hearts, of the masses.
Despite a lack of public acclaim, Albee's work remained highly regarded among his peers. Associated with the Theater of the Absurd, the avant-garde school of drama begun in the 1950s, Albee stood among such renowned playwrights as Beckett, Ionesco, Genet, and Pinter. Albee's internationally performed plays include "The Zoo Story" (1960), "The American Dream" (1961), and "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" (1962). "Tiny Alice" (1965) and "A Delicate Balance and Seascape" (1975) both won Pulitzer Prizes.
"Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”, his most successful work, was made into a 1966 film starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. As in many Albee works, "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" explores the inner lives of destructive, manipulative, and desperate characters. George and Martha, a married couple, verbally and emotionally tear each other to shreds one drunken night. After the denial-shattering violent climax, the couple unites in quiet, shaken sorrow -- it's an interesting side-note that Albee actually took the play's title from bathroom-wall graffiti.
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