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Playwright Edward Albee Is Dead At 88
By
Rebecca Fishbein
Published Sep 17, 2016
Modified Sep 17, 2016
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By
Rebecca Fishbein
Published Sep 17, 2016
Modified Sep 17, 2016
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Edward Albee, the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright who penned Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, The Zoo Story, and The Goat, or Who is Sylvia?, among others, died in Montauk yesterday. He was 88 years old.
Albee, who grew up in Westchester, moved to Greenwich Village in the 1950s, where he began writing plays. The Zoo Story, a one-act piece about two men who meet on a park bench in Central Park, was his debut, and premiered in West Berlin (alongside a Samuel Beckett play) in 1959. The Zoo Story was performed in Greenwich Village the following year, helping to launch Off-Broadway productions.
Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf?, which is perhaps Albee's most famous play, premiered on Broadway in 1962—it won a Tony Award for best play, and was later turned into a film with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor.
Albee went on to produce dozens of plays, all of which dealt with isolationism, dashed hope, and frustration with contemporary, post-World War II America. One of Albee's final plays, The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia? was performed on Broadway in 2002, and won another Tony. He won Pulitzers for A Delicate Balance, All Over, and Three Tall Women.
Albee was openly gay, and longtime partner Jonathan Thomas predeceased him in 2005.
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