Edward Albee
Overview
Edward Franklin Albee III (icon ; born March 12, 1928) is an American playwright
Playwright
A playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...

 who is best known for The Zoo Story
The Zoo Story
Not to be confused with Zoo Story: Life in the Garden of Captives the book about Lowry Park ZooThe Zoo Story is American playwright Edward Albee's first play; written in 1958 and completed in just three weeks...

(1958), The Sandbox (1959), Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is a play by Edward Albee that opened on Broadway at the Billy Rose Theater on October 13, 1962. The original cast featured Uta Hagen as Martha, Arthur Hill as George, Melinda Dillon as Honey and George Grizzard as Nick. It was directed by Alan Schneider...

(1962), and a rewrite of the screenplay for the unsuccessful musical version of Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's
Breakfast at Tiffany's (musical)
Breakfast at Tiffany's is a legendary flop in Broadway musical history. The musical is based on the Truman Capote novella and 1961 film of the same name about a free spirit named Holly Golightly...

(1966). His works are considered well-crafted, often unsympathetic examinations of the modern condition. His early works reflect a mastery and Americanization of the Theatre of the Absurd
Theatre of the Absurd
The Theatre of the Absurd is a designation for particular plays of absurdist fiction, written by a number of primarily European playwrights in the late 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, as well as to the style of theatre which has evolved from their work...

 that found its peak in works by European playwrights such as Jean Genet
Jean Genet
Jean Genet was a prominent and controversial French novelist, playwright, poet, essayist, and political activist. Early in his life he was a vagabond and petty criminal, but later took to writing...

, Samuel Beckett
Samuel Beckett
Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.Beckett is widely regarded as among the most...

, and Eugène Ionesco
Eugène Ionesco
Eugène Ionesco was a Romanian and French playwright and dramatist, and one of the foremost playwrights of the Theatre of the Absurd...

.
Discussions
Quotations

What I wanted to get at is the value difference between pornographic playing-cards when you're a kid, and pornographic playing-cards when you're older. It's that when you're a kid you use the cards as a substitute for a real experience, and when you're older you use real experience as a substitute for the fantasy.

The Zoo Story (1959).

I have a fine sense of the ridiculous, but no sense of humour.

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1961)

The gods too are fond of a joke.

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1961)

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

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1961)

One must let the play happen to one; one must let the mind loose to respond as it will, to receive impressions, to sense rather than know, to gather rather than immediately understand.

On his play Tiny Alice, in National Observer (5 April 1965)

I'm not suggesting that the play is without fault; all of my plays are imperfect, I'm rather happy to say — it leaves me something to do.

On his play Tiny Alice, in National Observer (5 April 1965)

Good writers define reality; bad ones merely restate it. A good writer turns fact into truth; a bad writer will, more often than not, accomplish the opposite.

Saturday Review (4 May 1966)

A play is fiction — and fiction is fact distilled into truth.

The New York Times (18 September 1966)

Your source material is the people you know, not those you don't know, [but] every character is an extension of the author's own personality.

The New York Times (18 September 1966)

What people really want in the theater is fantasy involvement and not reality involvement.

Quote (4 June 1967)

 
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