Edward Albee is a living legend of the Theater World. The author of thirty plays including several well known classicsand for sure one very important masterpiece being "Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf?", it is a rare privilege to be part of an audience for an on-stage Q&A with him at the Sydney Theater Company.
"What could be worse than getting to the end of your life and realizing you hadn't lived it?" . In just one sentence, Albee has provided a pivotal platform of his work as a dramatist. It may be a disturbing one but for him "writing should be useful. If it can't instruct people a little bit more about the responsibilities of consciousness there's no point in doing it."
Born in 1928 he was adopted at only two weeks old by a wealthy family who failed to make of him an important corporate identity. Instead, the young Albee left home for good before he was twenty and for ten years he tried without success at all sorts of writing including poetry and prose. In 1958, his first play - a one act called "Zoo story" was premiered in Berlin in a German translation. What an odd way to start a career as a playwright of english language yet be performed in a language that you don't understand.
The highlight of Albee's career remains the creation of "Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf?" on Broadway in October 1962. A controversial piece of work on middle class American couple taking a grim yet objective view on the previous decade idealistic American family . Before Albee, both John Updike and Richard Yates treated the same subject in two important books "Rubbit run" and "Revolutionary Road" in the early sixties.
The success of this long and complex drama has made Albee an important American voice of the Twentieth and the early part of the Twenty first centuries. Over the years he has challenged audiences and his austerity has disappointed many. The principle of writing which is probably the same as any other creative art form is to stimulate the recipient. Albee has made this principle as his golden rule hencethe existence of a chaotic theatrical journey that will not leave your sophisticated theater goer indifferent.
This afternoon was also the perfect occasion to purchase a rare first edition of "Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf?" published in 1962 in pristine condition and get Albee signed. I guess in a matter of minutes my investment doubled if not tripled in value.
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