Edward Albee as Theatrical and Dramatic Innovator explores this three-time Pulitzer prize-winning playwright’s innovations as a dramatist and theatrical artist and his contributions to the evolution of modern American drama.
From the "angry young man" who wrote Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf in 1962, determined to expose the emptiness of American experience to Tiny Alice which reveals his indebtedness to Samuel Beckett and Eugene Ionesco's Theatre of the Absurd, Edward Albee's varied work makes it difficult to label him precisely. Bruce Mann and his contributors approach Albee as an innovator in theatrical form, filling a critical gap in theatrical scholarship.
Introduction -- Peter and Jerry: "Homelife" and The zoo story -- The zoo story -- The death of Bessie Smith -- The sandbox -- The American dream -- Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf? -- Tiny Alice -- A delicate balance -- Box and quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung -- All over -- Seascape -- Listening -- Counting the ways: a vaudville -- The lady from Dubuque -- The man who had three arms -- Finding the sun -- Marriage play -- Tall women -- Fragments -- The play about the baby -- The goat or, who is Sylvia? -- Occupant -- Knock! knock! who's there!? -- Bibliography -- Chronology of plays.
America's most important living playwright, Edward Albee, has been rocking our country's moral, political and artistic complacency for more than 50 years. Beginning with his debut play, The Zoo Story (1958), and on to his barrier breaking works of the 1960s, most notably The American Dream (1960), Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1963), and the Pulitzer Prize-winning A Delicate Balance (1966), Albee's unsparing indictment of the American way of life earned him early distinction as the dramatist of his generation. His acclaim was enhanced further in the decades that followed with prize-winning dramas such as Seascape (1974) and Three Tall Women (1991), as well as recent works like The Play About the Baby (2001) and The Goat. (2002). Albee has brought the same critical force to his non-theatrical prose. Stretching My Mind collects for the first time ever the author's writings on theater, literature, and the political and cultural battlegrounds that have defined his career. Many of the selections were drawn from Albee's private papers, and almost all previously published material -- dating from 1960 to the present -- has never been reprinted. Topics include Samuel Beckett, Eugene Ionesco, Sam Shepherd, as well as autobiographical writings about Albee's life, work, and worldview.
When you emerge from this impish comic playwright's glittering tribute to Molière, written entirely in verse, your head will be so dizzy with syncopated rhyme that you'll almost expect to find yourself speaking and thinking in chiming couplets...[Ives] add The truism that families come in all shapes and sizes is illuminated with haunting beauty...in this exquisitely wrought comedy-drama...a piercing portrait of the contemporary social architecture, in which the distance between people can be widened or collaps
Edward Albee electrified the theatre world with The Zoo Story and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Proclaimed playwright of his generation, he went on to win three Pulitzer Prizes for his searing and innovative plays.
Edward Albee - American Writers 77 was first published in 1969. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.