Edward Albee
Edward Albee
Edward Franklin Albee IIIis an American playwright known for works such as The Zoo Story, The Sandbox, and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. His works are often considered as well-crafted, realistic 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. Younger American playwrights, such as Paula Vogel, credit Albee's daring mix of...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPlaywright
Date of Birth12 March 1928
CountryUnited States of America
Edward Albee quotes about
I suppose, writing a play is finding out what the play is.
I usually think about a play anywhere from six months to a year and a half before I sit down to write it out.
Each time I sit down and write a play I try to dismiss from my mind as much as I possibly can the implications of what I've done before, what I'm going to do, what other people think about my work, the failure or success of the previous play. I'm stuck with a new reality that I've got to create.
Naturally, no writer who's any good at all would sit down and put a sheet of paper in a typewriter and start typing a play unless he knew what he was writing about.
I don't pay much attention to how the plays relate thematically to each other. I think that's very dangerous to do, because in the theater one is self-conscious enough without planning ahead or wondering about the thematic relation from one play to the next. One hopes that one is developing, and writing interestingly, and that's where it should end, I think.
I've never seen it staged or on film, but the story is so intense that I could feel the adrenaline running through my body while reading it. There's this chest-tightening anxiety of being thrown into the middle of this conflict between the different characters. I also love the idea that you can be drawn in by hateful characters. It takes a very good writer to create a character that you despise, yet find engaging. And there's the twist of the imaginary child. As it develops, you realize what is actually going on beneath it all. It's shocking and pretty horrifying.
One has always got to be terribly careful, since the theater is made up of a whole bunch of prima donnas, not to let the distortions occur.
A rather ugly thing starts happening: the playwright finds himself knocked down for works that quite often are just as good or better than the works he's been praised for previously. And a lot of playwrights become confused by this and they start doing imitations of what they've done before, or they try to do something entirely different, in which case they get accused by the same critics of not doing what they used to do so well.
Every writer's got to pay some attention, I suppose, to what his critics say because theirs is a reflection of what the audience feels about his work.
There are a number of contemporary playwrights whom I admire enormously, but that's not at all the same thing as being influenced.
If you intellectualize and examine the creative process too carefully it can evaporate and vanish. It's not only terribly difficult to talk about, it's also dangerous.
If you're willing to fail interestingly, you tend to succeed interestingly.
Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf means who's afraid of the big bad wolf ... who's afraid of living life without false illusions.
Why we are here is an impenetrable question.